The Power of Labels
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.
Notice which aspects of each housing system are mentioned, emphasized, or left out:
BC Egg’s “Egg labels 101”
vs
BC SPCA’s “Understanding egg labels”
To see how perspective influences word choice check out the two sources below. Each source breaks down the meaning behind egg carton labels.
Word choice in action
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”.