The Good Egg
(Page 2 of 2)
August/September 2005
By Cheryl Long and Umut Newbury
The egg board represents the producers who raise chickens in confinement. These producers keep their 300 million chickens entirely indoors. The birds never see grass, let alone feed on it. They raise birds in tiny cages where they barely have room to turn around. They routinely “debeak” the hens so they won’t peck each other to death. They withhold food and water to force the birds to molt all at once. The buildings where birds are confined reek of ammonia from the accumulated manure. Many birds die of heart failure.
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Most of us are aware the chickens that lay supermarket eggs are not treated well. Now, we have clear evidence of what the egg board doesn’t want us to know: Intensive confinement operations are giving us substandard food. We have asked the board to remove its incorrect claims about the quality of free-range eggs. If you’d like to join us, contact the board via its Web site, www.aeb.org.
To help spread the word about this Real Food issue, we’ve created the “Chicken and Egg Page.” Free-range producers are invited to post nutrient test results for their flocks, and we’ve listed the addresses and prices of the labs we recommend for testing. (We are especially interested in receiving nutrient data on eggs from modern “high-production” breeds raised on pasture, and data on how much less grain birds require when kept on pasture.)
Chickens are fun and easy to keep in your back yard. All they need is protection from predators (many folks use a movable pen) and a few minutes of daily care. If you decide not to produce your own eggs, you probably can find a local free-range source. These eggs may cost more than supermarket eggs, but they’ll give you better flavor, lower cholesterol and higher nutrients. Paying a premium is well worth it when you know that the birds were treated well.
Rejecting substandard food by paying more for quality products is the only thing that will improve our food supply and force producers to treat livestock more humanely.
-- Mother Earth News editor-in-chief Cheryl Long’s flock of six Welsumer hens was among those tested for this article. Associate editor Umut Newbury is a passionate advocate of Real Food and humane treatment of animals.
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