Social Context

What does the word "cage" mean to consumers?

Thought experiment:

Take 30 seconds to think about the word “cage”

What words or images come to mind?
How might these associations influence your willingness to purchase a product?

The Power of Labels

Research shows that many consumers do not clearly understand what different egg labels mean (Ochs et al,. 2018)(Rondoni et al,. 2020)(Nolan et al,. 2022)(Rahmani et al., 2019). When people are unsure about a label, they often rely on mental shortcuts to make decisions more quickly. Using these shortcuts can save time and energy, however, they can also make consumers more likely to be influenced by marketing and make choices that do not fully match their values or needs.

Seeing the word “cage” on an egg label—whether it refers to “conventional” or “enriched” systems—can turn some consumers away as many people associate cages with poor animal welfare. This belief can affect which type of eggs they buy, even though most consumers are not aware that enriched systems address some of their freedom of behaviour concerns (Weary et al., 2016) (Nolan et al,. 2022)(Doyon et al,. 2015).

Lack of label understanding can enable brands to bypass consumer preconceptions. For example, they can switch out the word “cage” for “housing” or “coop”. Or they can include words like “eco”, “natural”, or “nest laid” to get consumers to associate their eggs with more natural living conditions. The variety of words used to label eggs can lead to confusion around what housing systems hens are actually living in.

Survey on Canadian's understanding of egg carton labels

Notice which aspects of each housing system are mentioned, emphasized, or left out:

BC Egg’s “Egg labels 101”

BC SPCA’s “Understanding egg labels”

To see how word choice shapes perspective check out these two sources that break down the meaning behind egg carton labels

Trust & Transparency

Regulation for housing systems, like NFACC’s Code of Practice, can combat consumer uncertainty by setting clear industry standards for all housing systems. This increases transparency and decreases the public’s reliance on private certification schemes to determine associated welfare conditions of a product (Scrinis et al,. 2017). Before NFACC’s 2017 Code of Practice, no regulation existed for free-run or free-range systems in Canada (Pelletier et al., 2018).

Another way to increase trust and acceptance of egg industry standards is through public education initiatives. Public concerns towards the egg industry revolve around the support of natural behaviour expressions (Ochs et al., 2018)(Sonntag et al., 2019); experimental studies that have demonstrated to the public that behavioural welfare needs can be supported by enriched systems saw a shift in acceptance towards this system (Nolan et al,. 2022)(Ochs et al., 2019)(Rohlf et al., 2019).

Interest peaked? Check out this study by Nolan et al. (2022):

This study explored the social preconceptions towards the word “cage”, while also measuring participants' response to education on welfare practices for laying hens.

In the study they took 1157 participants and assigned them into four treatment groups: two control groups and two education groups. The control groups received a video with general information about chickens, while the education groups received an video about welfare management in the egg industry, with the only difference being for one group the enriched cage system was called “furnished housing system”, and for the other it was called “furnished cage”.

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