The Panera Bread Company announced its intentions to move to 100 percent cage-free eggs for all of its US Panera Bread, St. Louis Bread Co. and bakery-café food menus by 2020. The announcement makes Panera the latest company to join a growing list of restaurant chains that have pledged to stop using eggs from cage-confined hens.
The move includes all shell eggs, hardboiled eggs and liquid egg whites as well as eggs used in sweet goods, soufflés and dressings—a total of more than 120 million eggs annually.
Panera announced additional animal welfare progress updates including:
-Pigs: 100 percent gestation-crate free in 2015
-Beef cattle: 89 percent grass fed, free range in 2015
-Poultry: 100 percent of chicken and roasted turkey in sandwiches and salads raised without antibiotics in 2015
“For more than a decade, we’ve been working to reduce antibiotic use and confinement across our supply chain,” says Ron Shaich, Panera founder and CEO. “We are honored to have been recognized as one of the two best performing national restaurant companies in an independent report on antibiotics usage and transparency in September. While there is more work to be done, we are within reach of a menu without antibiotics and unnecessary confinement. We are committed to transparency – which means sharing where we are and where we plan to go. We encourage other companies to join us by transparently sharing their progress.”
