It's a tough deal for them critters. Generally 2 years of max egg yield, and then for egg producing hens its straight to the pet food industry. What a world we've wrought.

(a) A general policy of over-production that has to be stopped.

(b) Without cheap meat what will the poor eat?

Especially the second bit. Do you know what all this healthy bio and organic stuff costs? To put it simple: if we want to stop doing cheap meat, we are confronted with an economic inequity that stares us in the face.

UK government going ahead with something that challenges the corporate wish because, as always, it's a push from the EU.

It's undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but only a small one. The definition of 'free range' covers chickens packed in as tightly as a battery shed but with access to a small mud yard that only holds a tiny proportion of them.

And all that's before we get on to the slaughter of birds as soon as their egg-yield drops, into low-grade food or petfood products (the non-meat animal industry and the meat industry going hand in hand again).

And then there's what be one of the weirdest jobs on earth, sexing new-born chicks. Half of chicks are male so won't grow to be egg layers. So there are people who go round sexing chicks at a couple of days old. Males are commonly thrown into food mincers while still alive. (There's RSPCA advice to say it'd be nice if they were gassed first, but nobody does it).

And still there are vegetarians who tell me that their diet involves no animal death.