PLANS to put more than a quarter of a million hens in 11 huge sheds and sell their eggs as "free-range" have been derided as a mockery by animal welfare campaigners.

Glenrath Farms, an award-winning Scottish business which supplies eggs to Tesco and Asda, has run into a storm of protest over its scheme to create one of the world's largest free-range egg farms in the Borders.

The company recently won planning permission to build a 160-metre-long shed for 25,000 hens at Blyth Bank, south of West Linton. It is applying to Scottish Borders Council for permission to erect another 10 similar sheds nearby.

In its application Glenrath says it is expanding production of free-range eggs to meet a huge increase in demand. Conventional battery cages, which provide 60% of the eggs sold in UK supermarkets, have to be phased out in 2012 under European law.

Glenrath says it will build the sheds to standards which will allow the eggs to be labelled as free-range. According to the Scottish Executive, this means there should be no more than nine hens per square metre indoors.

The birds also must have access to the open via "pop-holes", providing at least two metres of opening for every 1000 hens. Outdoors, every hen should have access to four square metres of ground.

But these arrangements are really "pseudo-free-range", according to John Robins of Animal Concern. "Hens have a pecking order and the strongest can take control of pop-holes and refuse to let the other birds out into the fresh air," he said. "This is an industrialised, factory-farm version of free-range."

If Glenrath is given planning permission, Robins promises he will be calling for a change in the labelling requirements so that the public could decide whether they wanted to buy such eggs. "This makes a mockery of farm animal welfare standards," he said.

Local residents alarmed at Glenrath's plans have formed the Blyth Bank Action Group, which claims the public is being hoodwinked into paying a premium for free-range eggs. "In reality, flock size in each shed is so great that only a small proportion of hens ever penetrate the outside," said a spokesman. "Most live, lay and defecate in artificial daylight, dust and flies and ammonia."

Local people fear the sheds will generate pollution, noise and traffic as well as blight the landscape. "The development would irreversibly change the entire valley," said Ian Scullion of Blyth Bridge.

Glenrath Farms, with 200 staff, is Scotland's largest agricultural employer. It was declared UK Farm Business of the Year in 2004 and in the same year was a winner in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards.

Company chairman John Campbell did not return the Sunday Herald's calls on Friday. However, in documents supporting the planning application for the proposed development, the company revealed it would create up to 60 new jobs, as well as 77 million eggs and 6875 tonnes of manure a year.

The plan is deemed vital for the future of Campbell's farming business. "The whole future of the development of Glenrath Farms Ltd will be seriously disrupted if the development does not proceed," says an environmental statement prepared for the company.

The move to free-range egg production was welcomed by the pressure group Compassion in World Farming, though it was apprehensive about the scale of Glenrath's plans. "Consumers have now got to start asking what free-range really means," said the group's policy adviser, Peter Stevenson.

Last November it was reported that up to 30 million eggs from battery farms had been sold as free-range in UK shops and supermarkets. An investigation has been launched by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.