Montreal’s SPCA is calling for new federal regulations around labelling on farm products that would tell consumers how eggs, dairy and meat are produced.

In the case of eggs, the SPCA wants mandatory labelling that tells consumers if they came from hens kept in battery cages, as the European Union now does.

Under the SPCA’s proposed "truth in labelling" regulations, egg cartons would be labelled barn eggs, free range eggs, organic eggs or caged eggs.

“We’ve seen in the European Union that it’s been very successful in shaping the demand for more animal-friendly products and it’s deemed a key way of improving farmed animal welfare,” Sophie Gaillard, campaigns manager for the Montreal SPCA, told CBC.

As it stands, Gaillard said 98 per cent of Quebec hens are raised in battery cages that do not allow the birds sufficient room to stretch their limbs and turn around.

To go along with the proposed regulations, the SPCA also wants the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to implement new regulatory oversights on products from farmed animals that claim to respect animal welfare.

It is hoping to gather 50,000 signatures on a petition that it will deliver to the CFIA.

Gaillard said the current lack of oversight means terms like “free run” and “free range” eggs don’t actually have to conform to any minimum standards.

“The terms ‘free run’ and ‘free range’ are used more and more to market certain products as being more animal friendly but they don’t correspond to any regulatory standards, there’s no verification conducted by the government to make sure that they actually are free range or free run,” Gaillard said.

According to the SPCA, ‘free run’ means hens are allowed to roam free in barns while ‘free range’ means hens can go outdoors.

The SPCA wants the CFIA to regulate the terms ‘free run’ and ‘free range’ so they correspond with welfare standards that the agency can verify.

The campaign is also calling on the CFIA to regulate the imagery used to market farm products in order to protect consumers from being misled.

“For example, images of dairy cows in rolling green pastures - that shouldn’t be used if the animals are actually never going outdoors,” Gaillard said.

Denis Frenette, production and research director at the Quebec Federation of Egg Producers, said his organization is not “100 per cent opposed” to the SPCA campaign.

However, Frenette told CBC that animal welfare is a complicated issue that extends beyond how chickens are kept.

“There are a lot of factors involved,” he said, pointing to a higher mortality rate for birds kept outside of cages.

In a written statement to CBC, the CFIA said its new Food Labelling Modernization Initiative is in the process analyzing the SPCA’s recommendations, among others.