Stores give cage eggs lower profile

TWO MORE of the country’s top multiples have dropped cage eggs from their private label ranges, while a third has removed them from all its products containing eggs.

During the past month both Asda and Sainsbury’s have replaced their standard cage egg ranges with barn eggs, following the position already adopted by Tesco.

However, all three supermarkets have retained their ‘value’ lines of cage eggs in their displays, and sales of these are believed to be substantial. That leaves only Morrison’s among the top four to continue with cage eggs in a full range of sizes under its regular brand.

Meanwhile Waitrose, which stocks no cage eggs at all, has gone a step further and switched to free range eggs for all its own-label food products.

At Asda, agriculture strategy manager Chris Brown said that the store would be selling 140m fewer battery eggs in the coming year as a result of the move.

“Sales of free range eggs are growing at 22% – a faster rate of growth than any other major UK food retailer,” he claimed. Barn egg sales were also going up, he said.

At Morrison’s, where the cage egg remains on the shelves under the store’s regular brand for now, a spokesman said: “The product lines that we carry are based on customer demand, and our wide range enables customers to make an informed choice.”

At Waitrose, which stopped selling cage eggs in 2001, every own-label item containing egg has now been switched to the free range ingredient.

“There have been 400 lines in total – from quiches to ready meals to ice cream,” said buying director Angela Megson. “At Waitrose, we believe that quality goes far beyond what can be seen on our shelves. It’s important for our customers to know how their food is produced, and have confidence in its origins.”

To this end, the store has introduced new sections on its web site (www.waitrose.com) devoted to details on where food is sourced from and how it is produced. The four microsites are dedicated to meat, fish, dairy and eggs.

It will be interesting to see what impact the stores’ changes of policy will have on the pattern of overall UK egg sales. Latest figures from packing stations for the first quarter of this year show a small rise in market share for free range eggs of 2.5 percentage points over the last 12 months (see table), but mostly at the expense of the barn egg sector.