Study on free-range eggs

In a study conducted by researchers at the University of Adelaide and published in Anthrozoös, the journal of the International Society for Anthrozoology, consumers chose to buy free-range or cage-free eggs over eggs from caged hens because they believe they taste better and are better quality.

Free-range eggs were perceived as more nutritious, safer to eat and a means to avoid “industrialized” food.

To collect the data for the study, the researchers conducted focus groups and shopping mall interviews with 73 participants (of mixed age and gender) and asked about their food purchasing habits. Then they categorised the different reasons that people gave for their decisions to understand why people choose the food they do, especially when there are ethical issues and competing values involved.

Despite participants describing caged-egg production as “cruel”, they didn’t accentuate welfare reasons as critical for their purchases of free-range eggs. Instead, they felt that the free-range chickens were “happier” and therefore produced a better quality of product.

This finding suggests that consumers are more likely to purchase a food product if it is both “ethical” and viewed as being of better quality, rather than for ethical reasons alone.

The study also revealed that there were high levels of awareness among participants of caged-egg production when compared to other types of animal farming. Participants who bought free-range or cage-free eggs did not necessarily tend to buy meat with ethical claims, partly because the price difference is much smaller in eggs in comparison to different types of meat products.

Lead author Dr Heather J Bray from the School of Humanities and the Food Values Research Group at the University of Adelaide commented, “Taste and quality are strong motivations for purchasing and may be part of the reason why people are prepared to pay a higher price. More importantly, these findings suggest that consumers think about animal welfare in a much broader way than we previously thought, and in particular they believe that better welfare is connected to a better quality product.”

The study by Heather J Bray and Rachel A Ankeny appeared in the journal Anthrozoös, which is published by Taylor & Francis.

To read the full article, click here.