The recent ban on battery cages, housing chickens in cages, in Germany went into effect January of this year and has created a shortage of eggs during the holiday season. Because decorating hard-boiled eggs is an important tradition in Europe, many grocery stores are having to import roughly half of their eggs just to keep up with the Easter holiday demand. The country was not prepared for the transition period between cages and converting to another housing method. A spokesperson for chicken farmers, Gerd Sonnleitner, President of the National Union of Farmers, says, “With the cage ban we have lost one in five of the country’s chicken population. Right now we are producing only about half of our eggs ourselves.” This problem will extend far beyond the Easter holiday season.
A local rural business–FDI Cage Systems–is a world supplier of poultry equipment.
http://www.fdicagesystems.com/
Animal welfare activists are a force to be reckoned with. There is an earlier post about this very thing in your blog, Amanda.