the 2010 Poultry Science Association meeting. Introduction—The Socially Sustainable Egg Production project

ABSTRACT The social and political pressure to change egg production from conventional cage systems to al-ternative systems has been largely driven by the desire to provide more behavioral freedom for egg-laying hens. However, a change of this magnitude can affect other components of the production system and may result in unintended outcomes. To understand this issue, a So-cially Sustainable Egg Production project was formed to 1) conduct a holistic and integrated systematic re-view of the current state of knowledge about various aspects of sustainable egg production, and 2) develop a coordinated grant proposal for future extramural fund-ing based on the research priorities identified from the review. Expert study groups were formed to write evi-dence-based papers in 5 critical sustainability areas: he