*Typical factory farm | Photo: Abigail Messier | We Animals
Imagine living your life in a space no larger than a legal-size sheet of paper. For millions of hens used for egg production in Canada, extreme confinement isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a life sentence. Currently, the Canadian egg industry keeps 80% of hens in cages—cold metal enclosures that stifle their most basic instincts, preventing them from running, exploring, or even spreading their wings.
This bleak reality is why many companies across the Canadian food industry have committed to transitioning away from battery cages and to sourcing eggs from cage-free systems.
Cora and Sunset Grill’s Broken Promises
The transition away from battery cages is a necessary step toward meeting a minimum standard of decency for hens. With more than 80% of Canadians agreeing that chickens deserve the room to move and exercise, it is clear that extreme confinement is unacceptable.
In recognition of this, in 2016, two of Canada’s most prominent breakfast chains—Cora and Sunset Grill—publicly committed to sourcing only cage-free eggs by 2025.
Cora 2016 Cage-Free Pledge:
Sunset Grill 2016 Cage-Free Pledge:
By making the public commitment to go cage-free a decade ago, both companies effectively acknowledged that keeping hens in cages was an outdated and unethical practice. Despite this, they have recently walked back their pledges and failed to follow through, essentially condemning hens in their operations to a life within metal bars. With hundreds of locations across Canada, Sunset Grill and Cora had the opportunity to influence higher welfare standards across the industry with these commitments. Yet, their unfulfilled policies have left hens within their supply chains suffering in cages.
Silence and Stalling Is Not Progress
After years of silence on their progress, Cora delayed their 2025 commitment deadline to 2029. In a troubling attempt to rewrite history, the company appears to have edited its original 2016 press release, retroactively changing the 2025 date to 2029 and adding “enriched cages” (cages only slightly larger than standard cages) as if that had been the plan all along.
Cora’s Original Commitment:
Cora’s Edited Commitment:
Similarly, Sunset Grill also abandoned its original timeline and weakened its stance on animal welfare by accepting enriched cages, and pushing its commitment deadline even further to 2036, a staggering 20 years after the company first promised to spare hens from cages.
For an animal whose quality of life relies on the space she is given, these delays and weakened standards represent an unconscionable failure. While the industry markets enriched cages as a step up, they offer negligible welfare improvements and still deny hens the basic ability to stretch their wings fully.
By diminishing their commitments, Cora and Sunset are prolonging the suffering of millions of hens indefinitely. Despite their massive share of the family breakfast market, neither chain has ever shared a transparent progress report. Cora and Sunset Grill are leaving millions of hens suffering in cages while customers remain in the dark.
Restoring Trust: Next Steps for Cora and Sunset Grill
Canada’s leading breakfast chains cannot justify taking 13 or 20 years to reduce animal suffering, only to keep birds caged under the guise of ‘enrichment.’ Cora and Sunset Grill must stop the delays, disclose their actual progress, and reaffirm a 100% cage-free standard within a truly reasonable timeframe.
The situation for hens in Canada is critical. Now more than ever, they need you to advocate for change! You don’t have to be in Canada to take action.
Use your voice by:
The well-being of countless hens trapped in Cora and Sunset Grill’s supply chains is on the line, and together we can and will hold them accountable.
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