The Incredible (Profitable and Shouldn’t be)
Edible Egg
While we may not know if the chicken or the egg came first,
we do know eggs do not come from the grocery store despite sales and shelving.
Like milk, eggs come from cognitive animals that blink in the sun and have
preferences about which of their peers they befriend or which area of their
pasture is the best. Those refrigerated grocery store aisles have been
expertly-designed, applauded, and promoted by the industry leaders like the American
Egg Board (AEB). The AEB’s website uses rhetorically kitschy lists of 12 bullet
points and 12 organizational suggestions for plan-o-grams to boost sales. Or,
wait; revise that. Some eggs do come from there, and when I say there I mean
there as the institution that is huge-scale, commercial, industrial, factory
food production. The eggs from there are indeed eggs you may want to consider
before eating.
Despite the time span of one paragraph, we probably still don’t know if the chicken or the egg came
first; however, we do know where our LFFC chickens and eggs come from. A good night’s rest (preferably
in flannel winter sheets) assured, the eggs laid by LFFC lady chickens are
raised in a way that looks nothing like the life of chickens you read PETA
horror stories about. Rather, LFFC’s eggs are laid in environments that look
like the imagery conjured by “pastured”—soft, green grass, overgrown dandelions
here and there, and chickens dwadalling around foraging for bugs to munch.
Perhaps the areas of overgrown dandelions aren’t the dairy cows’ and chickens’
favorite area of the pasture.
Rewind it back: you may want to reconsider eating the eggs
that do come from an institution/culture/misunderstanding of food/place like the
refrigerated shelves near your grocer’s freezer. Those shelves are:
(1) places
that have been designed to encourage consumers to buy—because once they/we buy
they/we will use—eggs despite the prior irrelevant egg vacancy in their home
fridge;
(2) places
that assume “consumer as swayable vehicle for profit;”
(3) places that
are stocked by agribusiness that completely ignore everything except the bottom
line;
(4) places
that are never above wielding the logically fallacious savvy from their
professional PR and marketing firms in all written and codified material;
(5) and
places that buy from eggmen who want the most return on the least investment.
These places are designed so the eggs are on the opposite
end of the milk not because of categorical belonging but because there are many
other dairy somethings to need-upon-noticing between point eggs and point milk.
Note: high margin items are shelved at eye level. Notice we’ve only thus far
ranted on grocery stores, eggs, government-affiliated/funded (is there a
difference?) organizations, and consumers. What about the birds? This is for
the birds!
With simple, rudimentary browsing of a few different, but
all government-af-fund-iated, websites that the egg industry (like most I
guess) is concerned less with the welfare of its parts (animals, workers,
environment, communities) and more with the end to which those parts are means,
is an easy conclusion. A conclusion that is gross and upsetting which many
times is concluded long after already having purchased from the source or one
of its af-fund-iate places. Super bummer. The good news is we never stop learning.
By and large, the white eggs that dominate the egg market are laid in cage systems. Automation is imperative in system of cages because, “care, feeding, maintenance, sanitation, and gathering all take time and money.” Lucky for the egg industry, the Single Comb White Leghorn matures early (more eggs sooner), utilizes feed efficiently (cheap to feed), are relatively small (more birds per minimum space requirements), adapts to a variety of climates (can make money for the industry in a variety of locations), and “produces a relatively large number of white-shelled eggs, the color preferred by most consumers” (money maker).
The eggs that supply LFFC’s organic egg shares are raised from
rotationally pastured (not green-washed rhetoric like cage-free) chickens. The
idea of rotational pasturing is that the chickens always have new grass full of
bugs and yumminess to forage rather than a dry lot of dirt from overworking a
particular area until all the bugs are gone. When our chickens are fed
supplemental feed—supplemental—it,
too, is organic wheat, corn, or soy which means the eggs are certifiable. Our
chickens are never, ever de-beaked, or have their beaks trimmed as the euphemistic
dishonest egg industry folks might refer
to it. Savvy.
Commercial egg-laying hens are commonly debeaked in an
effort to counteract environmentally-induced behaviors like cannibalism,
injurious pecking, and stress. Commercial broiler chickens, or those raised for
meat, aren’t usually debeaked because they reach slaughter weight before
injurious behaviors manifest. Studies have shown that reducing the size of the
groups of chickens also reduces pecking and cannibalism— one of many egg
industry arguments for cage systems (aside from efficiency and profit) as the
cages prohibit the chickens from ever hanging out with any other chickens
besides the 6 or so stuffed into each cage. However, if laying hens weren’t
stashed in laying houses with hundreds of thousands of their peers in or out of
cages, they may not eat each other.
United Egg Producers (UEP) is a group of industry veterans
and professionals that represents about 95% of the egg producers in the
country. Many UEP group members are former government officials, poultry
professionals, or otherwise affiliated individuals. UEP asserts the United
States’ egg farmers “provide a safe and humane environment for the flocks of
hens that provide the nation’s egg supplies.” Really. I guess that’s why male
chicks are ground up alive because they’re of no use for the egg or chicken
meat industry. I guess that’s also why they endorse “therapeutic beak trimming”
(code speak: repeated debeaking at any age despite the increased stress after a
certain age) to curb “outbreaks of cannibalism.” Google “undercover investigation
at hyline hatchery.”
Checkmate.
Photo Credits: Happy chickens in doorway and egg dozen with LFFC logo, CSA Files, all others borrowed from Google images.
2 comments:
I'm a happy LFFC buyer and love my pastured egg share, but this blog post is very difficult to follow. I wish you had focused on supermarket stocking policies OR lauding how LFFC chickens are treated OR elaborated on the last UEP paragraph. I don't know what Checkmate refers to or what that tiny picture is of. I'm interested in the topic and would like more info about UEP grinding up chicks (documentation, please!) but you only alluded to the most interesting bits!
Hi Lindsay! Thanks so much for your response! This blog post is indeed choppy. The navigational difficulty I've posed for readers is no doubt a by-product of my own abbreviated research process and inability to shine light on only one part of this multifaceted, dissertation-worthy problem. My apologies about the stringiness, and please know your criticism falls not on deaf ears. I wanted to point at a few things that stood out most to me in an effort to pique readers' interest and encourage independent research. Lastly, I will be sure to include documentation from here on; you'd think an English MA would have taught me that by now! I added "checkmate" because this post is partly in response to the UEP's assertion that they "provide a safe and humane environment for the flocks of hens that provide the nation's egg supplies." The picture is of dumpsters and large trash bags full of dead chicks. Thank you again, and I'm happy to revisit the egg/chicken industry again with subsequent posts.
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