THE leader of Britain's poultry farmers has hit back at campaigners who are attempting to outlaw the EU's new, high-welfare egg production systems.

NFU poultry board chairman Charles Bourns says the so-called "colony cages" are an acceptable compromise which are already working well.

And, he says, any attempt to ban them will simply lead to British supermarkets importing eggs from countries where battery cages will still be in use.

Europe is ending decades of battery egg production in 2012, bowing to pressure from both welfare groups and consumers.

The new colony system will still see laying hens kept indoors, but in larger, taller cages, each capable of holding 60 birds and equipped with perches, scratching areas, nest boxes and water.

British farmers are currently embarking on a huge investment programme: each cage costs between £20 and £25 per bird to install and the industry has to move 15 million birds into them within three years.

But, last week, the RSPCA used a meeting of the European Parliament's Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals in Brussels to call for the colony system to be banned.

The society has led a long campaign against the caging of hens and says the colony system is still an intensive one. It wants all egg production to be free-range or based on barn systems.

But Mr Bourns, who farms at Wotton-under-Edge, says campaigners simply aren't living in the real world. "I've never kept a hen in a cage but I found the old cage system difficult to defend," he said.

"But I do see the colony system as an acceptable compromise, and I know from those farmers who have installed it that it leads to completely different patterns of behaviour in the hens. About 95 per cent of the eggs are being laid in the nest boxes.

"And at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, there are still large numbers of people out there who want lower-priced eggs than organic or free-range can deliver.

"For all the hoo-ha that we are hearing, 61 per cent of egg sales are still from caged birds and 48 per cent of eggs are sold through supermarkets. There is a huge market there for this product and if we don't supply it there are other countries which are only too ready to – and from old-fashioned battery systems."

Higher-priced organic and free-range egg sales have dipped in recent months because of the squeeze on consumer spending, while free-range producers have been severely affected by disease problems and are having to move housing around because of the wet summer.

But, said Mr Bourns, it still appeared to be the case that the top five per cent of affluent consumers were trying to drive policy.

"The fact is that there are people out there who genuinely cannot afford food from high-welfare production systems even if they wanted to buy it," he said.

"It is time we allowed British farmers to get on and produce what British consumers want to buy.

"It is easy for campaigners to say that they are not happy with cage production in any shape or form: what they are actually saying is that consumers cannot have a choice."