Free-range eggs look set to return to supermarket shelves after more than a month as the government lifted a ban on keeping birds inside.
The ban has been in place for some parts of the country since November, when poultry farmers discovered that they would have to cull up to one million birds due to the outbreak of the fast-spreading H5N1, also known as bird flu. During the outbreak, farmers were ordered to keep all of their birds indoors to prevent the spread of avian influenza.
Banning outdoor poultry caused a widespread shortage of free-range eggs, as those chicken farms producing the eggs could not legally say that their birds had been allowed to range freely. This led to the rise of some products being labelled as "barn eggs", meaning previously free-range chickens that were now being kept indoors.
