The future doesn’t involve cages, Dave Radlo said.

He’s banking on it.

“This is my dream, my goal for the future,” he said. He’s just being rushed into that future sooner than expected.

Radlo, president and CEO of Massachusetts-based Radlo Foods, committed last week to selling eggs exclusively from uncaged hens within a decade.

That’s going to be quite a feat for a business that ships an estimated 800 millions of eggs per year to consumers from Texas and east – as well as Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hong Kong. Most of them come from factory farms like the one in Turner that state agriculture agents raided last week.

“There’s no way we can do it overnight. But it can be done. I have a plan,” Radlo said Thursday.

He won’t elaborate, but said cage free is the way of the future.

“My dream in life is that some day we’ll get to the point where consumers are going to demand cage free and cage-free organic products,” Radlo said. “We’re excited about it, about doing what’s right for the hens, about their health and feeding them right.”

It’s not just on Radlo’s mind. Voters in California last fall passed a cage-free ballot measure, requiring that livestock and poultry have enough space to move around. The European Union is moving to phase out cage-raised eggs within five years. Back in Maine, state legislators are considering new, tougher guidelines for poultry and farm producers.

That legislation was in the works before state agriculture investigators served a search warrant on a Turner egg farm, operated jointly by Quality Egg of New England and Maine Contract Farming on April 1. That farm provided eggs to Radlo, and Radlo provided them to national egg seller Egg-land’s Best.

In the wake of the raid, Egg-land’s Best cut their relationship with Radlo. Radlo Foods continues to take eggs from one of the former DeCoster facilities, but Radlo has said that will be reevaluated when Easter is over and the seasonal demand for eggs drops. They no longer take eggs from the raided facility, however.

Days after the raid, Radlo said within 10 years his company would sell only cage-free eggs.

The cages were an innovation 50 years ago, according to Tom Shea, Radlo Food’s vice president of production. They were designed to maximize production, keeping the hens safe and healthy.

“The recipe for eggs is simple – food, water and stress-free,” Shea said. “You’ll get eggs. That hasn’t changed.”

What did change is competition. Locally grown Maine eggs had to compete with abundant eggs from the south.

“It was the 70s, and it was economics,” Shea said. “They can produce chickens much cheaper down south in that controlled environment. The climate is better, and it was closer to the Midwest, where all the feed was.”

Bill Bell, of the New England Brown Egg Council, said Maine used to have as many as 50 egg producers across the state.

“But they began to buy each other up, and the big ones just got bigger,” Bell said. Today, there are four: Radlo, Dorothy Eggs, Mountain Hollow Farms and the former DeCoster farms.

As they combined, the operations got bigger. Shea defends the cage facilities. That’s still where the bulk of the eggs on the market come from, and they can be healthy and humane.

“But you can’t control every person that works there,” he said. “It’s not fair to paint an entire operation, with the actions of one or two.”

The movement toward cage-free eggs seems familiar to Shea.

“It’s more like what I grew up with,” he said.

Their eggs will be more expensive, Radlo said. Barns with caged hens can produce 41,000 eggs per day, while a similar-sized cage-free facility will produce 18,000 eggs. A cage-free barn requires more people, tending the birds and collecting eggs, than one that relies on cages and automation.

And state oversight will add costs, too.

“I think you’ll see more video, actual video cameras in the barns watching what goes on,” Radlo said. “That’s another cost and it’s going to be added right along.”

Radlo said the industry might even see a return to smaller egg producers with smaller operations.

“The demand is there, even though some people have short arms – they have a tough time reaching down into their pockets to pay for eggs,” Radlo said. “But it’s what people want. The eggs are healthier, they’re more humane. And, in the long run, I think people will be willing to pay for that.”