 On the 1st of January, an EU directive comes into force banning the use of... As a change in European law coming to effect this weekend will make it illegal to keep the birds... Cost-effective, perhaps, but an EU-wide ban came into force in January. The EU banned battery cages. Imagine a full-grown egg-laying hen spending its whole life squashed into a small cage with four or five other birds, each one sitting in a space smaller than an A4 piece of paper.