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Here in California, there is a proposition on the ballot that could change the way laying hens, pigs, and calves are treated. Proposition 2 would require farms to "allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs."
Tuesday's Oprah episode was about the farming of these animals. Lisa Ling took cameras to both convential and cage-free chicken farms, as well as showed some pig farms and calves being raised for veal.
The conditions in the conventional farms wwould surprise most consumers, I think. The hens are kept 5 or 6 to a cage, stacked five or more rows high. The chicken are thin and white, or they would be white if they weren't covered in chichen waste all the time. They never see the light of day. they spend their entire life in the crowded little cage, and the farm's stench is overwhelming.
Contrasting this was a cage-free farm, where the fat, colorful chickens are housed in one big open coop, and then let outside for much of the day to roam free, eat, and spread their wings. They all go back to their coop, on their own, when the sun goes down.
I'd bet most of us would like to think this is where our eggs and chickens come from. But this farm only produces 900 eggs per day. The conventional chicken farm produces 80 times that amount each day. And the difference shows up in the price of the dozen eggs we buy at the store.
They show some filthy and inhumane conditions for calves and pigs too, but a representative from Californians for Safe Food says that there aren't many of those farms in California, but that California's huge egg industry would be wiped out. She says farmers can't afford to refit their farms, and don't even have the space for housing the prop would require. The cost of farming that way would drive the cost of eggs up so high, retailers and consumers would buy cheaper eggs from Mexico, or even as far away as China.
Now that does scare me. I really do try to buy local, and all the eggs I buy are produced in California. Not only to save on gas and trucking, and because the more local the more fresh, but also because I don't trust the standards of food from Asia or Central America.
But the chickens!
Read the rest of this post at Small Things
