Company/Organization

Tangshan City Fengrun District Free Eggs Farmers' Cooperative

Case name

Balance between animal welfare and environmental protection in chicken farming

Project description

As efficiency-focused intensive animal agriculture models become the norm, fewer and fewer farmed animals are raised with high-welfare free range farming methods, and the higher price of free-range and high-welfare animal products makes them unaffordable for mainstream consumers to purchase regularly. To make high-welfare animal products affordable for more families, the founder of Tangshan City Fengrun District Free Eggs Farmers' Cooperative developed a fully automated free-range chicken roost management technology that greatly reduces labor costs for their free-range chicken farm. These savings are passed on to the consumer, reducing barriers for consumers to choose high-welfare animal products more often.

Besides the quality of the eggs, Free Egg Farmers' Cooperative also cares about the ecological sustainability of the farm. Traditional poultry farming usually leaves the ground unable to grow new grass. The Cooperative adopted rotation grazing method - a regenerative farming technique - to their chicken farming operation, so that the land is fertilized and enriched rather than depleted, created a biodiverse farm environment.

Free Egg Farmers' Cooperative proves that animal agriculture and ecological sustainability are not mutually exclusive.