Do you buy free range eggs?
Free range, barn eggs, organic… there is a baffling range of eggs on the supermarket shelves, but what’s best for the hens?
Once upon a time, eggs were the simplest of kitchen staples, but not anymore. Welfare campaigns have improved the dismal life of battery hens and in turn led to wider consumer choice. But now an extensive range of eggs, from value brands through to organic and nutritionally enriched varieties, vie for space on supermarket shelves. But which are the highest-welfare eggs?
Cramped battery cages were banned across the EU in 2012, but animal welfare experts agree that new and so-called improved “enriched” cages are not a great deal better. The birds have slightly more room to move than in conventional battery cages – 13 to 14 hens per square metre and a few furnishings – but their ability to behave naturally remains severely restricted.
Ultimately, the question of which eggs to buy depends on your personal ethical priorities and, of course, your budget.
Checking the eggs before you buy them is important. All eggs sold in the UK must be stamped with the method of production: 0=organic, 1= free-range, 2=barn, 3=caged and state this on the carton. The British Lion symbol also tells you that the eggs are British-laid and have been vaccinated against salmonella. Price is a good indicator of how the hens that laid the eggs were raised. If you buy your eggs from the supermarket, the cheapest are likely to be from hens kept in cages, while the most expensive organic brands are potentially the highest-welfare.
What are your views? Do you attach a lot of importance to the wellbeing of the animal when choosing your eggs? How do you make your decision when selecting your eggs?
What are your views?
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Anybody producing eggs by means of poor living and carrying conditions should NOT be given a licence to sell to the retail trade. Retail trade should not be permitted to buy animal products that have been kept in unworthy conditions.
When people were kept as slaves to produce work for their owners it was considered normal. It took a long time to eliminate slavery as the norm and the slave to be considered a living breathing being with feelings.
Surely if enough people fought for more rights for animals by refusing to buy tortured animals produce we can have a chance of eating our meat and sub products with the knowledge that the captive creature was treated well and did not suffer humility and pain during its short life.
I realise that a lot of people may not be able to afford the higher priced free range eggs/meats but the prices should not be higher, it is cheaper to keep free range hens in a field or open barn to come any go happily producing more eggs naturally.
Whatever type of conscience you may have, it is NEVER right to be cruel to living beings for profit, that really is the bottom line. The last of the slaves......vote not to buy into the cruel world of greedy, profit driven low life producers and buy products that clearly show how and where the product was raised and kept.
If in doubt for heavens sake go without, the retailer will soon get the message!
Fortunately one of neighbours even closer has a number of dogs, including a Jack Russell, he deals with any rat problems we have!
I think you may know I don't countenance animal cruelty in any shape or form. Working with livestock, I may say they thrive and make good prices at market if they've been well looked after. Besides which, my job, sometimes handling a ton of beef on the hoof, is only possible because from a calf I forged a trusting relationship with that animal. I've never needed to use a rod attached to the bull's nose ring. 'Come on, ole boy,' and the beast would follow. As soon as I could I made sure I was behind him! Horns hurt!
I didn't work in poultry but I do know how it functions. Again, overt cruelty to hens results in far fewer eggs. In the case of table birds, if one is cruel to them then they don't put on weight, the while scoffing expensive food.
I'll say again, in the farming of bigger beasts there is very little cruelty - it just doesn't pay! But poultry ... yes of course, if only in the housing systems employed.
I can't speak about poultry farming but when farming pigs 30 years ago in N. Yorkshire, we had a vet inspection every 3 months. And it was a thorough inspection. The vet, sometimes James Herriot or his son Jimmy, would only sign us off if we had a totally clean bill of health. The slightest flaw in our animal management and our certificate was withheld.
In England animal cruelty laws are limp wristed. Added to which the ever power National Farmer's Union will get their legals on the case and win.
Once out of their native habitat they must be fed but seldom is it their preferred food. Dairy cattle are fed on a silage regime (high cellulose plants such as maize and grass, fermented with sulphuric acid and compressed). After compression a foul smelling viscous dark liquid seeps out from the silage pile. I've know it rots wellies in a couple of days! But we feed this to cattle! Oh, and we eat the beef or drink their milk.
Pigs are fed barley meal medicated with antibiotics; they're in the mix to help combat diseases unknown in wild pigs but prevalent and disastrous in captive pigs. Of course, both livestock and handlers then build up antibiotic resistance. This resistance is worse for people who work in closed houses with pigs, we breathing the dust also build up an antibiotic resistance. It is present in me. Garlic sorts out most of my infections at the moment but the future ...?
In 1981 I was farming pigs in Suffolk. About three miles away a very modern pig unit had an outbreak of Aujeski's Disease - it devastates a pig herd. Aujeski's breaks out somewhere in the UK about once every 100 years. The entire area for miles around was locked down by the Min of Ag and Fish. That sort of lockdown is something to behold - we couldn't even leave the farm to buy food! Wicker laundry baskets of food were hurled over a farm fence from the main road. We shared what was there. A little like rationing.
A vet monitored our herd twice a day. Mercifully, we remained clear. But about 10,000 pigs were slaughtered locally. One of those vets was a pal. I asked him what the heck had brought this about? 'The way we feed livestock, nothing else.'
Surely, the underlying problem, as Wilf has pointed out, is an exploding population. Brexit is putting pressure on our farmers to deliver more, to use set aside land to the full. To break EU rules and just produce food of some kind. Never mind the quality or nutritional value. Livestock is put under pressure, as are farmers and farm workers.
The outcome is very poor quality food, laden with antibiotics, sold to the population as 'healthy food.' End result? A sick population.
I could write more about animal diseases on farms; diseases which are not in evidence in wild boar, or cattle left to roam without intervention. But for now I'll shut up.
Although I was not in poultry to any extent the way it works is familiar to me. Supermarkets are the biggest retailers of eggs. They negotiate contracts up to 5 years ahead, with only minimal increases in wholesale costs allowed. In poultry and eggs the margins are tight.
Tesco, some years ago, leaned heavily on I think Edwina Curry to change the definition of free range hens. Hitherto hens designated free range needed to be housed, but free to run on grassland at will. That made their eggs very expensive because a flock of chickens will lay waste several acres of grassland in a few days and the farmer needed a lot of valuable land to keep them going.
The definition was changed to read, if they're not caged then they must be free range. So almost all so called free range eggs sold in supermarkets are from hens kept on deep litter - a dense bed of straw in a warehouse sized building, temperature controlled and humidity regulated. To be profitable a farm needs several such buildings.
The hens are culled at about two years old and sold for chicken pies! But this is supermarket farming, minimum costs and maximum profits. To supermarkets animal welfare is a costly add-on. They're only interested if it sells more product.
Yes, there are producers running genuinely free range but they generally sell into a niche market such as 'organic,' or 'health food.' Locally, genuine free range eggs sell for between £4 -5 a dozen large.
You won't be surprised I run my own hens and have done for the greater part of my life. We had 30 here for several years and sold the very many excess eggs. A Blackrock hen will produce six eggs a week throughout the year. Nowadays we've scaled down to six. They're in their run during Spring and Summer and once the summer crops are lifted winter crops are fenced off and they're let loose for 5 months. If they get out of the garden I send 3 Collies to round them up. Never fails.
Yet it must be said of hens, they're the very best garden pest killers. They forage all day and only go back to the hen hut to lay an egg or sleep. While they're loose on the garden I don't feed them, don't need to do that.
When this country had older style mixed farms, no more than maybe 200 acres, rearing a few cattle, a house cow or two, sheep, pigs, geese and hens those farms were almost self sufficient. Crop rotation was a 5 year cycle and muck was money! There was little if any need for expensive artificial fertiliser produced from oil. They produced their own fertility. The produce from these farms could be sold more cheaply because it was produced more cheaply. Huge farm subsidies didn't exist.
Each animal type and plant was an integral part of the farm's eco-cycle; something of each animal was marketable to locals. But the War changed that.
Suddenly, the focus of agriculture became towns and cities. It was a government sponsored move. Agriculture was becoming intensive and still is, but more so. Food quality dropped in favour of quantity. Even gardeners in the Dig for Victory campaign were told to use Growmore, the same 3 part artificial fertiliser that was available to farmers.
We've moved to a massively intensive form of agriculture and I can't say I approve. That 200 acre farm cited above was at least 5 times more productive, and thence more profitable, as the agri-businessmen may achieve today.
We've prioritised quantity over quality. That's a mistake. We always need to eat more poor quality food. A case in point: my nearly son-in-law, yes, still nearly, asked for burgers and the trimmings when dining here. Butcher's burgers, eggs from our hens, our potatoes and onions. Nothing unusual. But, he asked for 3 burgers and filled his steak plate with the rest. Just past one burger he gave in. Stuffed! Dogs fed well that night!
On the point of eggs, if we eat a good wholesome diet of naturally produced food, grown or reared on well nourished land, we don't need that many eggs in our diet. Thus, no need for battery hens.
Given I'm small, my wife says petite - how lovely - my daily food intake is very little, yet I work like a dog for 7 months a year in the garden. In 2001 I had a burger in Nitre in Slovakia, birth place of that Schindlers List chap. It was satisfying, value for money and not at all like the next one a few years later at McD's which sent my pulse sky high and blood pressure to the point I dare not drive.
Burgeoning populations are a problem but I maintain the belief there is yet sufficient food available if the super powers would cease playing food politics. But even the near future is problematic. Already we are reading reports of seemingly long dead plagues reviving and attacking populations. The Black Death, which devastated Europe in I think the 13th C is on the march, as is small pox, Typhus and Diphtheria. It seems to me there may be a population cull waiting in the wings.
Being utterly self centred here, we have such a transitory population any one or more of those diseases could strike here in the UK.
Utopia? Well, Wilf, every attempt at a Utopia so far has failed and for very simple reasons. I have no hope the next, or is that current, attempt will succeed.
I was in our butcher's on Friday. They had Sutton Hoo raised chickens (where the Viking Treasure was unearthed in the 30's and now on display in the British Museum). That bird had been raised on grass land, entirely free range.
What struck me was the price. A 1.25kg bird, sufficient for a meal for two people, was priced at £11.79!
We ventured into Morrison's for Oxo's etc., and I found a 1.5kg bird - doubtless raised in a cage, for £3.99!
Now, I'm not comparing quality and price as such. But over £12 for a complete home cooked meal for two is a little steep, don't you think? Or am I being tight again?
My family doesn't exercise the discernment we do about food. If it tastes good eat it! I've ploughed better looking stuff into the soil! They do not appreciate the difference between a cheap chicken and a well raised premium bird. But my wife and I do.
In the end I bought a chicken raised on deep litter for £4.99. It's in the oven now.
But, I have another birthday in a couple of weeks. Then, after a lovely day out with the dogs we will have a Sutton Hoo bird. Hang the cost, I didn't ever expect to live this long!!