In the village of Hostun in the Drôme region of France, a poultry farm is slowly modernizing its facilities to move away from traditional caged systems and adapt to changing consumer preferences. Inside one of the buildings, a few feathers litter the floor, and the metal frames of old cages stand stripped of their former use. The word "battery," once used to describe these cages, is now fading on numbered panels. Outside, bins are filled with remnants of cages, which will soon be discarded. In the coming months, the building will be transformed to allow hens to roam freely on the ground. "Free-range eggs are in demand, we have to produce what sells, it's the trend," says farmer Yvan Moréon, 57, during a visit organized by the egg industry organization (CNPO). His company raises and packages eggs, mainly for wholesalers who supply restaurants, schools, and other catering services, or industrial clients. These customers typically use eggs labeled with code 2 (hens on the ground in buildings) or code 3 (caged hens). In supermarkets, French consumers prefer free-range (code 1) or organic (code 0) eggs, which together account for about half of the market. The CNPO has set a goal of having 90% of hens raised in cage-free systems by 2030, up from 78% currently in France. According to the latest CNPO survey, most of the remaining 147 farms with cages plan to make the switch to meet this deadline. The cost of converting each hen to a cage-free system is around 30 euros. In July of last year, the European Commission announced it would draft a law on animal welfare for poultry farming by the end of 2026, including a "transition to cage-free farming systems" and the prohibition of grinding male chicks, a practice already banned in France. This promise followed years of pressure from animal welfare groups, who collected 1.4 million signatures in 2021 for a citizen initiative to end cage farming. Yves-Marie Beaudet, a farmer and president of the CNPO, says France is likely to meet the European schedule, using a "voluntary" approach. If the proposal is finalized by the end of 2026, it may be debated in 2028, with a transition period that could last up to ten years. This will require convincing countries like Poland, which heavily relies on cage farming. Yvan Moréon and his son Andréa have decided to convert one of their four buildings each year starting in 2025, at a cost of 30 euros per hen, or about 1.2 million euros per building for 45,000 hens. The cost of a new building now exceeds 50 euros per hen. The transformation of a building takes four months, and once completed, the hens will need a month to adjust to the new environment and learn to lay eggs in the nests. The hens will stay in the building for more than a year before being sent to the slaughterhouse. During this time, the farm loses a quarter of its production, which it compensates for by purchasing eggs from other regions, such as the Grand West, the main egg-producing area in France. This allows them to use the three million euros invested in recent years to automate the sorting and packaging of eggs in their mini factory. Yvan Moréon has optimized the building renovations to keep the same number of hens on the ground as previously housed in cages, thanks to the wide aisles in the old two-story cages. However, moving to ground-based systems usually results in a 10 to 20% reduction in the number of hens per building, due to regulations on the amount of space per hen: 13 per square meter in cages, compared to 9 on the ground. "In a building with hens on the ground, you have to be more careful, it's more technical," says Andréa, 23, a third-generation farmer. But it also takes "more time," especially when the hens first arrive and need to be "educated" to lay eggs in the nests. The process also costs more due to increased feed consumption.