BBC Food & Farming Awards finalist: Griffiths Eggs – On Your Farm – Radio 4

In a fully automated packing shed in Shropshire a collection of robots and their human helpers grade and pack a billion eggs every year. This site is owned and run by the Griffiths family, who have been breaking the mould in egg production for decades. They specialise in producing eggs from hens kept indoors. After the ban on battery cages came into force, they invested millions in new ‘colony’ cages. Now, just a decade later, they are pulling out the colony cages and putting up new cage-free apparatus. It’s an attempt to get ahead of the game as the supermarkets plan to phase out selling caged eggs completely. To ensure the system is the best it can be, they’ve employed chicken welfare experts to monitor their hens and advice them on best practice. Another ground-breaking move has seen them build a muck-burner – using chicken poo, which can cause pollution when spread on the land, to make heat and electricity instead.

Griffiths Eggs has been chosen by Charlotte Smith as one of her three finalists in the “Farming for the Future” category of this year’s BBC Food and Farming Awards. In this programme, Charlotte visits the farm to hear about the family’s penchant for innovation.