A number of years back, I had business dealings with a local caged egg operation.  At that time the integrators were being pressured to have minimum standards for amount of space per bird. I don't recall exact details, but they were wanting the egg producers to reduce the number of birds in each cage to meet these standards.  There was a bunch of griping and grumbling about this, how much money they - the egg producers - were going to lose.  They ended up being forced to meet these standards. Do you know what happened?  They had less birds in each cage, and less birds on each operation. Less birds meant less eggs being produced. Less eggs produced meant less supply, and so the price of eggs went up.  In the end, these producers were just as far ahead with less birds.  That is what I recall.