And the Good Egg Award winners are...

Regarding free range not necessarily being much more humane than cages, there’s a current campaign being waged by Animals Australia against a NSW move to allow even more hens to be crammed into sheds, while their eggs are still labelled as “free range”. The industry wants to be able to pack in more, the animal welfare people want to stop them. It’s a truth in labelling issue also. People are happy to pay more for eggs produced humanely, yet they’re being misled and would be horrified to see how these hens are actually treated.
http://www.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/save-free-range-eggs/

EvanJames said :

Holden Caulfield said :

Silo?

Not any more, evidently, given that the owner was loudly blaming the free range eggs, not her own food prep and storage practises.

Yes. I should have added one of these to my previous post -> 😛

So go vegan if you can’t find satisfactory eggs. For chumps who insist on eating eggs my restaurant also uses free range and has for a long time (and no hospitalisations despite customers abusing me for their salads having a hard egg on them). The boss is no hippy but the free range stuff is apparently what you need to buy for a quality ingredient.

maniac said :

I have personally witnessed ‘free-range’ hens and the nausea I felt then still remains with me today. People think that free-range eggs are so much better than cage-eggs and certainly they are as the birds are not standing on wire all day. However, what people do not realise is the following from http://www.tryveg.net/animal_cruelty.aspx?animal=hens

“After learning about the cruelty endured by battery hens, many people think buying free-range eggs is the answer. However, birds on free-range farms are still abused:

Hens may still have the outer part of their beak painfully burnt off with a hot metal blade or wire;

Hens may spend a large part of their day crowded into sheds with thousands of other birds;

Hens are still sent to slaughter at 18 months to 2 years of age, when they begin to lay fewer eggs;

As in the battery egg industry, male chicks are killed shortly after hatching.”

As a schoolkid I personally saw this and it turned me right off my dreams of working in agriculture. Free-range hens have a very strong pecking order. The birds at the bottom of the rung are picked on viciously, have their feathers ripped out and when egg-bound suffer incredibly as the hens peck at their cloacas. Being packed together in these ‘free-range’ sheds there is simply no escape for them.

Eggs are fine, but I would much rather have my own chooks in the backyard where I know they live long happy lives, than buy so called free-range eggs.

Fair enough, but what would you suggest apartment living people who can’t have chickens, is there any other cruelty free choices?

Holden Caulfield said :

Silo?

Not any more, evidently, given that the owner was loudly blaming the free range eggs, not her own food prep and storage practises.

Silo?

I have personally witnessed ‘free-range’ hens and the nausea I felt then still remains with me today. People think that free-range eggs are so much better than cage-eggs and certainly they are as the birds are not standing on wire all day. However, what people do not realise is the following from http://www.tryveg.net/animal_cruelty.aspx?animal=hens

“After learning about the cruelty endured by battery hens, many people think buying free-range eggs is the answer. However, birds on free-range farms are still abused:

Hens may still have the outer part of their beak painfully burnt off with a hot metal blade or wire;

Hens may spend a large part of their day crowded into sheds with thousands of other birds;

Hens are still sent to slaughter at 18 months to 2 years of age, when they begin to lay fewer eggs;

As in the battery egg industry, male chicks are killed shortly after hatching.”

As a schoolkid I personally saw this and it turned me right off my dreams of working in agriculture. Free-range hens have a very strong pecking order. The birds at the bottom of the rung are picked on viciously, have their feathers ripped out and when egg-bound suffer incredibly as the hens peck at their cloacas. Being packed together in these ‘free-range’ sheds there is simply no escape for them.

Eggs are fine, but I would much rather have my own chooks in the backyard where I know they live long happy lives, than buy so called free-range eggs.

damien haas said :

Be careful when buying eggs, I have noticed some cartons now have only ten eggs, not a dozen.

Caveat Emptor…..they also sell….gasp!….eggs by the half dozen.

Seriously downsizing is not new, 250ml becomes 200ml, 200g becomes 175g and so forth. The information is right in front of you when you select the product for purchase, do you expect they should run a series of prime time ads or put public notices in the paper to inform you of their decision to reduce the weight/volume in order to make the price more attractive?

Be careful when buying eggs, I have noticed some cartons now have only ten eggs, not a dozen.

This is not a paid ad…

Costco sells free range eggs in packets of 18 that are cheaper than a dozen free range eggs at my nearest large supermarket. I haven’t compared the unit price, but I think they are about the same as cage eggs elsewhere.

I come from a farming family. My family has been raising dairy cows and free range chooks since the 1860’s, and the animals were always treated with respect. Yes, we’d eat the chooks, but they had lives that were as happy as a chook could want, and they were killed humanely before becoming dinner.

As a kid I visited a couple of battery “farms” where chooks are tortured, and the memories will never leave me. I’d like to put the “farmers” who run these operations into the cages for a while and see how they like it.