Despite being Europe’s largest egg producer, France is struggling to keep up with soaring domestic demand as shoppers look for cheaper sources of protein. A plan to build 300 new farms should help, but animal welfare advocates say this must not undermine progress on standards and the move away from cages.
France produced a staggering 15.4 billion eggs in 2024, more than any other EU country. Yet there are regular gaps on supermarket shelves.
"Demand for eggs has gone up a lot, especially over the past few months," says Alice Richard, head of the National Committee for the Promotion of the Egg (CNPO).
Egg consumption jumped 4-5 percent in 2023 and 2024, with the trend accelerating in early 2025. French consumers now eat an average of 240 eggs per person annually, whether as whole eggs or in processed foods – a 20-year record.
This love affair is largely driven by economic factors. France sells different categories of eggs – barn, free range, red label and organic – and the average price per egg is around 26 cents. A two-egg omelette could cost as little as 50 cents – far cheaper than a burger or chicken wing – making eggs an affordable option in a cost of living crisis.
"It really started two years ago, during the surge in inflation," Richard notes. "Eggs are the cheapest source of animal protein, so naturally people turned to them when prices were rising across the board. And now, those habits have kind of stuck."
The surge in demand has been compounded by psychological factors, she adds. Recent images of empty egg shelves in the United States, where bird flu has devastated poultry farms, triggered panic buying and some stockpiling among French consumers.
Cracking for imports
But unlike the US, where avian influenza decimated 15 percent of laying hens, France has largely avoided production disruptions thanks to a vaccination programme for ducks – the primary spreaders of bird flu. "Only two minor outbreaks have been reported this year on relatively small farms," Richard notes.
However, countries such as Poland and Hungary, hard hit by bird flu, began importing cheap eggs from Ukraine. With demand outweighing production, France has also turned to imports, which now account for 20 percent, and many are from Ukraine.
That’s a problem, Richard says, since France and Ukraine have very different production costs and animal welfare standards.
"Around 75 percent of French hens are now raised in free-range, organic or in barn systems rather than in cages, but in Ukraine almost all hens are raised in cages or in barns and the standards aren't the same. Their health and safety standards are different too, especially around things like salmonella."
Listen to a conversation about egg production and animal welfare in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 130
Increasing production
The CNPO aims to meet the rising demand through domestic production rather than imports and has hatched a €300 million plan to build 300 new henhouses by 2030.
Richard says demanding norms in France means it takes an average of two years to set up a farm. To facilitate the process and encourage more young farmers, the industry is pushing for regulations to be eased, including raising the environmental review threshold from 40,000 to 60,000 hens and streamlining red tape.
"All we're asking is that the same threshold applies across Europe," Richard argues. "It doesn't make sense that France is the only one with this strict limit, especially when we have to import eggs from countries that aren't following the same rules."
The proposed new hen houses would average around 30,000 hens each – the minimum size the industry considers economically viable for farmers to make a living solely from egg production. Importantly, all new facilities are to be cage-free, in line with the latest French legislation.
"Farmers are ready to meet this growing demand, but they are coming up against clearly identified obstacles," MP Nicole Le Peih, herself a farmer, recently told France's Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard in parliament.
"Building projects, even those that comply with standards and are open-air, are slowed down, contested or even blocked," Le Peih said, referring to animal rights groups that have succeeded in blocking the expansion or construction of huge egg farms.
Genevard praised the CNPO project, saying it was an "ambition within reach, as long as we allow the construction of poultry houses". She underlined the government's commitment to simplifying procedures, as shown in recently approved legislation on food and farming sovereignty.
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Animal welfare concerns
The easing of red tape is already under way, much to the concern of animal rights groups.
An egg farm in the Oise region recently got the green light to expand from 900,000 to 1.2 million hens, despite strong opposition from locals and the L214 animal rights association, which described it as "not a farm but a factory" and vowed to take legal action.
Another project in Sergines, south-east of Paris, to build a brand new 38,000-strong hen farm finally got the go ahead in March after a six-year battle, supported by L214.
Hens on such huge farms are kept in the dark, with little space to roam, animal welfare groups say. And while French law stipulates that any new farms must be cage-free, that doesn't apply to extensions.
Cages can still be used for eggs produced for the food industry – which accounts for roughly half of French production. EU-wide legislation passed in 2012 banned battery cages in favour of "enriched" ones which provide a little more space and allow for natural behaviours, including elements such as a nesting area and perch.
"They’re still cages," says Cyril Ernst from Anima, an organisation focused on accelerating the movement towards cage-free egg production.
"Some 12 million hens are still in cages in France ... hens are probably the most mistreated animals on earth and in cage systems they suffer horribly because they are deprived of everything that matters for them."
While he understands the need for farmers to make a profit, he says this must not come at the expense of animal wellbeing. "Price is important, and that's why we're not against funding this transition, maybe new farms need to be built, but the question is what type of farms are we heading towards and investing in?
"We need higher-welfare farms. Building farms on very large scales, with 1 million hens for example, is not a solution," he insists.
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Interests aligned
Under the 2018 EGAlim law, France's egg farmers have had to transition away from cages – 81.7 percent of French eggs are now produced in alternative systems, either free-range, organic or on the ground in barns. The vast majority of cage eggs are used in catering, he explains, with around 20 percent still sold in shops.
Meanwhile on the European level, the move towards a total ban on cages, while slow, is gaining ground, Ernst notes, so it makes long-term economic sense for French farmers not to roll back their efforts.
"New farms should meet high welfare standards, or else they will just be obsolete again in 15 years or so because norms will progress again."
Despite their different priorities, Anima and the CNPO are working together and both sides are counting on changes at the European level.
"I think our interests are uniquely aligned in this case," the campaigner notes, "because French farmers are making the transition to cage-free."
He calls on France to join Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Slovenia and Sweden in backing the proposed EU-wide ban on cages. "French farmers wouldn't have to compete with cage eggs from other EU countries [such as Poland and Spain] if a ban were to be taken up by the European Commission."
In light of increasing imports from Ukraine, Richard echoes a similar sentiment. "Ukrainian eggs are so cheap to produce that even with tariffs, they're still very competitive," she says. "So we're asking the EU to rethink how these imports are managed. To us, it's unfair competition."
