Hen welfare is critical to the egg industry and a cornerstone of UEP. Animal welfare is a broad topic, and focus is needed to ensure UEP moves forward and provides relevant support for its producer members. After holding several meetings and receiving broad input from other UEP members, the Animal Welfare Priorities Subcommittee identified the following key priorities.

1  Update the UEP Certified Cage-free Guidelines and Procedures, with focus on four key areas.

• Ensuring areas addressed in other popular existing programs are matched, or improved, as appropriate
• Inclusion of outcome-based measures
• Addition of simple pullet guidelines/standards
• Aspects important for public relations

The Animal Welfare committee recommended this priority to the UEP Board, which voted to convene a task force dedicated to updating the Certified Cage-Free Guidelines and Procedures by October 2021.

2   Promote the UEP Certified Cage-free program.

While agreeing this is an important priority, the consensus of the Animal Welfare Committee was to address the program updates first.

3  Develop new animal welfare training for UEP Certified/members. 

The Animal Welfare committee recommended this priority to the UEP Board, which voted to allocate significant resources to updating the UEP Certified training materials. A series of modular components will allow flexibility in training and include testing to increase employee understanding and retention. UEP’s VP of Animal Welfare, Dr. Larry Sadler, will be leading this project with the goal of having updated training available in early 2022.

4   Develop fire mitigation guidelines.

The Animal Welfare committee recommended this priority to the UEP Board, which voted that a taskforce (independent of the Animal Welfare Committee) be formed to guide the development of fire mitigation guidelines for the egg industry.

5  Update/renew the Scientific Committee for Animal Welfare.

The Animal Welfare Committee's consensus was for staff and consultants to work with the Scientific Advisory Committee to identify needed areas of expertise and potential new members.