A Humane Egg - New York Times Editorial

[rancher hicks]

I had to weigh in. The EU has banned battery cages as of 2012. I believe.

Further there is the feed to egg ratio.
Now I have about 25-30 birds and I figure cost not including my labor at .75 for a doz. eggs. I sell them for $2.00 a doz.
It has been stated that in order to save money on eggs one needs to keep at least 10 birds.

One also has to consider the healthy eggs from pastured chickens. I pass out with my eggs a page from the new Grit mag.
"The pastured eggs were found to contain 10 % less fat, 34% less colesterol, 40 % more vit. A and 4 times as much omega 3 fatty acids. Compared to the standard values reported by the usda for commercial eggs." This was determined by state testing of three farms.

Now even if my eggs had half of these numbers then I am selling healthier eggs than commercial caged bird operations. I give customers the info and they know they are getting healthier eggs.
When you consider how overweight some of us are an increase in food prices isn't a bad thing if we are less overweight and eating less but healthier food. No offense to those not over weight.

A check of realestate shows a number of available poultry farms. At least the last time I looked. There are ways to cut costs if one really wants to.

Some I think, that could help?
Less energy for lights, recycled cartons, less cost for medicines to just name a few.

Read the new Practical Poultry. Speaking of lice and mites and regular dusting for them. "However, what I've noticed is that the naturally-reared stock (with a broody) doesn't have this tendency at all". Point being broody raised chicks seem not to have the problems incu and brooder raised chicks do. I wonder if like human babies chicks receive something from their mothers that makes a difference. I did notice the chick "drinking" from the hens beak. Rather neat to watch. I do know that brooder raised chicks grow faster from eating more and more often. At least mine do.

It seems to me that the average household may spend more on unnecessary things like ipods, etc. etc. and less on necessary things like healthy food. Further we'd all save money on health care services from eating healthier food.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Quote:
This is what I mean by disparity of perception. "Suffering" is a rather extreme term, in my opinion, to describe the conditions of commercial egg producing hens. While there are some factory farms where conditions are bad, most egg producers are providing optimal care for their hens in order for them to produce the best quality & quantity of eggs. Suffering hens will not lay. And certainly there is a big difference between the way production layers are kept and the way we keep our backyard chickens, but that doesn't mean that it is the only acceptable standard of care. It's like saying you're causing your dog to suffer if you don't allow it to sleep on your bed and share your pillow. Of course it may prefer that treatment, but it won't "suffer" if you keep it in a kennel out in the yard.

...I would cheerfully work an extra hour a week, or whatever it took to ensure that I could buy products from humanely treated beings. And if I was someone unwilling to do that, then I should eat something else...

Certainly you know that not everyone has those same options? Some folks are already working as long & as hard as they can to afford what they need for their families. Many are not able to supply all their human needs. They don't have the luxury of doing more for the sake of a little more elbow room for a chicken. They're already desperate for more elbow room for themselves.

...If we humans were to hold ourselves to higher standards, it would work itself out.JJ

Whose standards? Your standards? Who decides what standards EVERYone must meet? I know you treat your animals very well, but there are other animals being treated even better. What if the law decreed that your animals must be kept to higher standards of care, like champion polo ponies, and other people considered your animals to be "suffering" because they were not?​

 

[jjthinkagain]

Quote:
SSU: This is what I mean by disparity of perception. "Suffering" is a rather extreme term, in my opinion, to describe the conditions of commercial egg producing hens. While there are some factory farms where conditions are bad, most egg producers are providing optimal care for their hens in order for them to produce the best quality & quantity of eggs. Suffering hens will not lay. And certainly there is a big difference between the way production layers are kept and the way we keep our backyard chickens, but that doesn't mean that it is the only acceptable standard of care. It's like saying you're causing your dog to suffer if you don't allow it to sleep on your bed and share your pillow. Of course it may prefer that treatment, but it won't "suffer" if you keep it in a kennel out in the yard.

***jj: You are right that there are differences in perception. I don't think anyone would suggest there aren't. I will share a couple of examples of what I've seen many times. Each person can decide totally for themselves whether they think it's acceptable, but I call it horrific and suffering. If you don't, you don't (I'm not sure where you get the info that most egg producers provide optimal care - I have not found any evidence whatsoever that this is true). Conditions I've witnessed many a time: several hens are jammed together in cages barely bigger than the old milkboxes where milk was delivered on people's porches - their bodies tangled such that you can't tell whose body part is whose, beaks chopped because they're so close together they would hurt each other otherwise (so in such conditions they really had to do that), chicken waste everywhere, cage after cage after cage jammed up against one another.. They can't stretch, they can't walk, they can't lift their wings, they can't LIVE. I've also seen commercial operations claiming to have free range hens. Reality: thousands upon thousands of hens are loose in a room, trampling one another. You can't see floor space. You can't even see the bottom chickens because others are walking over top of them. Some are suffocating. They die. They never see the light of day but the 'free range' propaganda makes the average person think they are outdoors exploring in the sunshine. Not every place is like these examples, but even one place is one too many. Yes, in my opinion.

***jj:...I would cheerfully work an extra hour a week, or whatever it took to ensure that I could buy products from humanely treated beings. And if I was someone unwilling to do that, then I should eat something else...

SSU: Certainly you know that not everyone has those same options? Some folks are already working as long & as hard as they can to afford what they need for their families. Many are not able to supply all their human needs. They don't have the luxury of doing more for the sake of a little more elbow room for a chicken. They're already desperate for more elbow room for themselves.

***jj: Sorry, but I don't think that means it's okay to treat their food inhumanely. To me, there is never a good enough reason. And to me, the human condition will not get better so long as we rationalize that it's okay to treat any living beings in a way we ourselves would not want to be treated. I could be the poorest person walking the planet but would not want any being to be treated horribly (yes, by my definition) so I could afford to eat it. I know I may be unusual, but I would rather die than live because some other being suffered. And I most certainly wouldn't bring others into the world unless I could care for them with humanely treated food. And if I became poor after the fact and couldn't afford food from humanely treated animals, we would eat grains or something else rather than any being that was mistreated while it was alive. And yes, mistreated according to my personal perception of what that means.

***jj: ...If we humans were to hold ourselves to higher standards, it would work itself out.JJ

SSU: Whose standards? Your standards? Who decides what standards EVERYone must meet? I know you treat your animals very well, but there are other animals being treated even better. What if the law decreed that your animals must be kept to higher standards of care, like champion polo ponies, and other people considered your animals to be "suffering" because they were not?

***jj: I can appreciate the academic exercise - and even the challenges - here, but honestly, do you think it's that hard for us humans to figure this out? Civilized people have managed to decide that beating one another or keeping children in dark places without light is not okay. Even though there is a segment of society that insanely thinks such behavior is okay, most of society does not condone this type of behavior. Sure, there will be disagreements over some of the specifics, but it's not all that difficult to know what is cruel and what is not.

***jj: Okeedokee, all this is interesting but I mainly wanted to share the article with folks here in case of interest. It's clear there are differences of opinion about what is acceptable in the name of meeting human wants and needs, so perhaps we can leave it at that. :^)​

rancher hicks wrote: It seems to me that the average household may spend more on unnecessary things like ipods, etc. etc. and less on necessary things like healthy food. Further we'd all save money on health care services from eating healthier food.

***jj: Exactly. It's all very doable if the collective will was there.​

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
Clipping and pinioning are 2 different things. Clipping refers to cutting the flight feathers, and does not shorten the actual wing, just the feathers on one wing, to prevent flight. Pinioning is cutting off the final segment, or tip, of the wing. I personally would never do such a thing to a bird. I suppose it's possible it might be done by some with an intention to skirt the law.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
Last year, we got feeder pigs from a farm not far from us. The sows were enormous. They had a barn with an attached fenced outdoor area, and they had big stalls within the barn. These folks raise and sell pigs every year. The sows are not in tiny pens where they can't move. The piglets were not crushed by the sows. Maybe you've seen something in between, with farrowing pens just the wrong size, big enough for sows to move, but not big enough to avoid crushing the piglets? I know that the little farrowing pens are not the only way to successfully produce piglets, because I've seen it. Or perhaps people are talking about condition where pigs are always kept in small pens, not just at farrowing?

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Last year, we got feeder pigs from a farm not far from us. The sows were enormous. They had a barn with an attached fenced outdoor area, and they had big stalls within the barn. These folks raise and sell pigs every year. The sows are not in tiny pens where they can't move. The piglets were not crushed by the sows. Maybe you've seen something in between, with farrowing pens just the wrong size, big enough for sows to move, but not big enough to avoid crushing the piglets? I know that the little farrowing pens are not the only way to successfully produce piglets, because I've seen it. Or perhaps people are talking about condition where pigs are always kept in small pens, not just at farrowing?

That's pretty much the same set up we had when I was a kid....... large pens in the barn with access to an outdoor pen .....the sows still laid on piglets and crushed them pretty much every litter they had. I'd venture to guess the farm you got your feeder pigs from also has lost pigs to being laid on. Just because you didn't see it happen doesn't mean it didn't. Most of the time it happened in the first few days of their being born.....not when they were big enough that we were selling them.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
Maybe so...but they had 14 piglets from one sow and 10 piglets from the other, alive when it was time to sell them, so they must not have lost very many.

I'm not going to say you're entirely wrong, I haven't bred and raised pigs like that, myself. We just bought the weaner pigs and raised them to butcher. I'm just saying it's not inevitable that a sow will kill all of her young if she's not in a very small pen. Otherwise pigs would have become extinct before little farrowing pens were invented. Wild pigs reproduce prolifically, without farrowing pens, to the point they're a nuisance in many places.

 

[greathorse]

OK I cant help but weigh in here. My father raised pigs the old fashioned way when I grew up, pigs being crushed was an issue. Of course not nearly all the pigs were crushed and he raised pigs in a time when margins were not as slim as they are now. I do not recall the percentage of crushed pigs but it was a materiel loss for him. Many years later he produced pigs in a very "modern" farrowing house with typical farrowing crates. Crushed pigs were not an issue due to the style of crates he used. There were plenty of other issues that were brought on with the new large (for some of you factory) system, but crushed pigs was not one of them.

I might add that my father would likely (88 yrs old now) not quite get the factory farm label that would likely be put on his (now defunct) operation. He would have considered it a family operation that he put together to try to make a bit of an income producing pork.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

I myself have never personally visited a commercial egg farm, and due to biosecurity concerns I bet few folks get the opportunity. However I have watched videos, some made by animal-rights activists and others made by the egg industry. Each with their own agenda and perspective on the topic, making it difficult to know just which ones depict the actual and complete truth. I figure there's a wide range of conditions to be found in egg farms across the country, some better/worse than others.

Common sense tells you that a good egg farmer will want to provide optimal care & conditions for their chickens in order to produce the best & most eggs. The same way that a factory owner will want to keep his machinery & equipment in good working order. Bear in mind that farmers & ranchers tend their animals as livestock, not pets. It still requires considerate & humane treatment, but comes from a very different perspective. The best-kept animals will have the best production.

I myself do not keep my chickens confined to small cages, they are not debeaked, and have access to fresh air and greenstuff every day. But I also do not make my living selling their eggs. Certainly the most horrific conditions we've seen depicted are not acceptable and should be remedied immediately. I don't see how a profitable business could be run in that way, how chickens could still lay an adequate amount of quality eggs kept like that.

But I can see how chickens could be kept humanely for large-scale production. Certainly their lives are different from our own personal chickens, as different as a backyard watchdog from a dowager's pampered pet poodle, or a stock horse in a ranch string from an Olympic dressage horse. But all can still receive treatment that qualifies as humane. Few of us could keep our pets if only the extremely highest standards of care were legislated. I think animals tend to be very accepting of their lot in life, living primarily in the moment. One of our backyard chickens would probably find it stressful to be moved to a commercial egg farm, but those hens there know no other way of life. They may take comfort in their proximity to so many others in their flock. Their lives may be dull, but safe. I have read where these spent hens find it stressful when brought to backyard coops. Sort of like the Town Mouse/Country Mouse story.

And I still think the best way to effect change is through the free market. With the increased demand for specialty eggs there now are more of them on our grocery shelves. But as long as there is such a demand for low-cost eggs there will be large-scale production. I think that anyone so concerned about the welfare of animals should be even more sensitive to the plight of the poor. Not critical of their spending habits or dismissive towards their priorities. I wouldn't suggest that someone go vegan if they couldn't afford the priciest free-range eggs or grass-fed beef. Let's not even start discussing the negative impact on the animal kingdom caused by large-scale agriculture. And I find the hints that people shouldn't have children (breed?) if they don't plan to feed them from this exclusive menu is awfully, terribly chilling.

Here's a link to the United Egg Producers: http://www.uepcertified.com/program/myth-fact/
The Good Egg Project: http://www.goodeggproject.org/
The Incredible Edible Egg: http://www.incredibleegg.org/
American Egg Board: http://www.aeb.org/

Read them with as many "grains of salt" as you wish!

 

[greathorse]

Word!!!!

Very well articulated and very common sense. Yes the free market will drive the need for niche producers of eggs and meat. The free market has already created a huge demand for cage free eggs, I think that the market will ultimately make the caged product obsolete and there will be no need to legislate this.
Just one person's opinion