Demonstrators held up placards and chanted, while a van drove around Covent Garden displaying pictures of hens in cages and a link to a campaign website. It follows a similar van which targeted Brakes’ Ashford headquarters in Kent on Monday (20 October 2025).
Brakes had committed to go cage-free by the end of the year already, but The Humane League said it had not responded to its communications to affirm this.
It added that it had concerns due to a lack of reporting on its progress since its dialogue back in 2016 when Brakes had made its promise to go cage-free.
“With the end of the year approaching, we felt an update was needed, alongside a public statement detailing their cage-free commitment on their website,” said Jodi Darwood, campaigner at the Humane League.
“When we checked for public evidence of their commitment this year we could find no mention of it on the Brakes or Sysco websites. Their removal of the public commitment set off alarm bells.
“Our corporate relations team sent numerous emails to numerous different Brakes addresses this September, asking to please reinstate the commitment, but we never got a response until after we launched this campaign.
“We told Brakes that we were launching a campaign against them via email. We did not share protest specifics, as that would be counterproductive to our goals.”
The campaign group has since confirmed that the food service business has been in touch and will be fully caged-hen-free by the end of the year, adding that it will now halt its campaign against it.
Responding, a spokesperson from Brakes told Food Manufacture its position has not changed and its commitment remains intact: “I can confirm that our commitment is for our own brand eggs to be cage free by the end of the year, and there’s no change to that.”
Brakes says it had also informed The Humane League of its intent before its protest outside the Sysco office on Tuesday (21 October 2025).
Food Manufacture questioned The Humane League on this.
“We are happy and relieved that Brakes is implementing the commitment and stopped the campaign the very moment they communicated this to us directly. We have even done so before the commitment is stated publicly on their website, which they assure us will be done by November,” Darwood said.
“The entire campaign would have been averted if Brakes had only engaged with us in the first place. We would always prefer to work constructively with companies to improve the lives of animals.”
Darwood added that it would have been “irresponsible” if they had simply assumed Brakes to be on track in light of reversals from other companies recently, including Farmfoods.
Elsewhere, Heron Foods has published a cage-free commitment, promising to a 100% cage-free egg supply by the end of July 2026.
The retailer was established in Hull in 1979 and has increased its network of stores throughout the UK year-on-year, with over 340 locations throughout England today.
Data from Bryant Research shows that animal caging is the most disapproved practice in the UK.
While battery cages were outlawed in the UK in 2012, an estimated 7.7 million hens are kept in ‘enriched’ cages. These are larger but packed with more birds, meaning the space per bird is minimal.
