The current obligation to screen chickens and birds means that free-range chickens from professional poultry farmers actually become free-range chickens, Colruyt explains in a statement on Monday. The eggs of these chickens may no longer be sold as eggs from free-range chickens after the chickens cannot go outside for sixteen weeks. They are downgraded to free-range eggs, which means that poultry farmers get a lower price for them, even though they have made extra investments to build a free range, it is said.
Colruyt is therefore now launching ‘solidarities’, for which consumers pay the price of free-range eggs. For example, the affected poultry farmers still receive the compensation they received under normal circumstances.
The Boerenbond has responded positively to the initiative. Colruyt “indeed pays the extra surcharge for free-range eggs that can no longer be placed in the shop as such due to exceeding the sixteen-week confinement obligation (…)”, so that “the poultry farmer continues to receive the price of free-range eggs”.
