98% of all chickens and eggs in Canada come from battery cage farming. It's pretty brutal and very unhealthy.
Not unless it comes from Tyson. I found out that Tyson has a company-wide policy forbading battery cage hens. That's the only good thing I can say about them right now.
Cal-Maine? They are pro-battery cage all the way.
I don't know about Purdue, Pilgrim's Pride, Wayne Farms, or Carolina though I am sure they utilize both methods. Wayne Farms around here does the confined range breeder hen houses for eggs.
I say you get better eggs and better production if you do confined range breeder hen farms. This is how our farms are set up. I have a pic of the inside of the chicken houses somewhere on my iPhone and maybe up on FB somewhere but I will see.
In our chicken houses there are multiple levels. The birds have free movement within the confines of the chicken house, they are NOT confined to a cage. They have a large 500ft by 50ft area to roam in. In the older houses which are only 400ft by 40ft, there are roughly 8,000 birds. In the new houses it is roughly somewhere between 11,000-12,000 birds. The chickens 'migrate' in the houses. When they want to pack up together they can, when they want to spread out they can. There is plenty of room for them to stretch out and flap their wings. I know because I've had hens flip out and fly up in my face, not fun, but at least I know they have a more normal existence than those in battery cage farms. The chickens have a dust bathing area in the middle of the house that runs the entire length of the house, they have places they can roost, they have nest boxes so the hens can do their egg laying business naturally, they have separate feed bins from the hens and roosters so they don't fight each other for food. The roosters can't get into the hen feed and the hens can't get into the rooster feed.
I'm not saying it's perfect but it's a step in the right direction. I would change it so that the chickens would have access to actually being outside in the sunlight to get vitamin D naturally which would probably increase the quality of the eggs. I would like to see better ways of obtaining necessary samples from the chickens every quarter, more humane ways, and also a better way of keeping the general living areas more sanitary instead of the chickens having to be in there literally standing on a slat above their feces. If there was a way this could be efficiently pumped out of the house and used as a constant fertilizer for grass/hay that would be great. Your making use of a by-product of breeder hens - waste.
I would also have fewer birds per house. I'm thinking no more than 10,000 tops in a 500x50 house. Anything more than that and I feel like I'm swimming in a sea of birds.
And possibly add a third level on the back of the slats so the birds could spread out further or perch higher if they wanted.