Dear editor,

Are your readers aware that as well as the London Olympics to look forward to in 2012, this year will also mark the end of the cruel battery cage for laying hens across the EU.

As the athletes run around the new London stadium, the majority of Europe's 400 million egg laying hens currently caged, should be enjoying life outside the battery.

However, despite the promise from politicians to see the ban carried out in 2012, some within the egg industry appear to be pressing for the ban to be delayed. So in 2012 the athletes might be running free, but hens might not.

Battery cages are bad for the welfare of laying hens. Instead of walking around pecking and rolling in the dust, performing the natural behaviours that chickens have evolved to do over centuries, they are confined to a small cage unable to stretch their wings.

Several hens share this cage, each with less space than an A4 sheet of paper.

We can all help the hens. British consumers lead the way in buying free range and organic eggs and the more of us who do, the more supermarkets will ask farmers to produce more eggs from higher welfare systems.

We can help organisations like Compassion in World Farming to lobby politicians to ensure they keep their promise in 2012.

For more information on the campaign visit www.ciwf.org or contact me at the address below.

W Richards, Kite Farm, Brandy Brook Road, Roch, SA62 6HE.