Whilst the debate as to whether the chicken or the egg came first rages on, one company in Lincolnshire argues that it’s the welfare of its animals which takes priority every single time… following Jamie Oliver’s documentary on the industry, we spoke to a major egg producer to gauge farmers’ reaction to the portrayal of the free-range and intensive debate. Where will your eggs be coming from this Easter…?

Of all the ingredients in your refrigerator, eggs are pretty much the most versatile, and easily the most underrated. As a country we consume 10,426,000,000 each year, 29,000,000 each day, and spend £582,000,000 each year on them. The 28,700,000 birds which produce the country’s eggs labour hard to satisfy our desire, and without their plucky, clucky dedication, it would be impossible to enjoy a hearty cooked breakfast or slice of cake.

As a county, Lincolnshire is responsible for the production of 20% of the whole country’s food, and in terms of volume its booming egg and poultry industry is no exception. Late in 2007, the UK’s largest supermarket, Tesco, announced that it would be stocking Lincolnshire Farm Eggs in stores across the country. Since that point, it has been working with Noble Foods to ensure that the county retains both its reputation for agricultural excellence and as a county which grants serious consideration to the ethics of food production. Recent documentaries presented by Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall were considered by many in the industry to be a reasonably fair and honest assessment of the country’s poultry and egg industries, and despite a real bias towards free-range farming, were successful in providing consumers with a good idea of what happens ‘behind the scenes’.

To gauge for ourselves how the industry has reacted to the celebrity chefs’ mission to reveal the inner workings of the industry, to find out for ourselves if farming on such a huge scale could retain standards in animal welfare and ethics, and to find out if there was any substance in the programmes’ bias towards free range faming, we visited one poultry farm near Lincoln, owned by Noble Foods, which provides retailers with over 2,000,000 eggs each year, over 400 dozen each day, 365 days a year.

We were greeted at the farm by its manager Lesley Alick, who was to give us privileged access behind the scenes of the county’s largest free range egg producer. “We rarely let people on the farm, not because we’ve anything to hide but because our biosecurity policy is extremely strict.” She said. “We’ve guidelines from both DEFRA and