done it

  Hello I ran a small poultry processing plant for many years and have witness'd from 1995 onwards egg producers running free range units along side cages birds. Are business  was wholly hen processing collecting end of lay birds from 200 too 20,000 a week surpplying mainly the ethnic trade, who wanted medium to big hen size.

The gradual change from cage birds to freerange became a problem, freerange birds were generally small poor quality and mortality rates were high,also the rejection from processing line by  (PMI) was high.

With more egg poducers going for freerange less birds were keep't or producers went out of production this lead to a thoughput drop in the plant.

We were forced to close in 2007 after 70 years due to bureaucracy madness,   but thought i would let you no not just egg producers this is impacting on.

Hope this has been some help to you.

K White 

 Hello,

 Thanks for your reply.  Great to get a different perspective on the matter - just a shame it's not fallen well for you.

The project is still in it's early days but already some major issues have come to light so it'll be interesting to gauge just how much of a impact it's having on the industry as a whole.

 Tess