ova

[arguchik]

so i just hard-boiled a baker's dozen of eggs, and ate 2 of them. they're just your basic "organic, free-range" eggs. i was just wondering why egg companies (and presumably consumers) fetishize the "vegetarian feed" and "access to the outdoors" (which is not the same as the mostly outdoor life the hens would probably prefer, i would like to point out) of their egg-laying hens. for that matter, i would like to know why hens are kept in huge barns to begin with, where they need all kinds of additives in their food to keep them healthy enough to lay eggs...yeah, many of you have probably seen the ALF videos shot in large-scale industrial commercial egg production facilities. (so-called "organic, free-range" farms are not much better than your basic industrial egg farm, either...)

the thing is, hens are about the easiest animal in the world to raise, it seems to me. their natural diet is bugs and grubs, along with seeds and grass and whatever else they can forage (i.e. they are not vegetarians). when they are allowed to forage, they will take care of their own feathers, and they stay quite healthy (i'm not exactly prepared to defend this statement with evidence, but it seems plausible to me that the avian flu epidemic is a product of overcrowding in the modern agricultural context). of their own accord, they will return to their roosting spot at night.

so i'm just curious...i think many people are uncomfortable with the stark reality that is the industrial egg production facility--with the bleak lives that hens lead in such facilities, the overcrowding, the noise, the smell, the stress, the filth.... what is it about the words "all vegetarian feed with flaxseed!" or "access to the outdoors," or "high in omega-3's," (from all that flaxseed of course) that assuages a buyer's discomfort (liberal guilt)?*** this is a serious question...i still buy and eat eggs--and i always get the organic free-range ones--so i'm not moralizing or claiming a higher ground here, i'm just verbally scratching my head.

***incidentally, eggs from hens allowed to scratch out their natural diet of the aforementioned bugs, grubs, etc., are also high in omega-3 fatty acids; they are full of all kinds of good-for-you stuff that doesn't require the addition of an expensive commodity like flaxseed--seriously, have you priced that stuff???--to the hens' diet.

Comments

huh?

[alice-at-night.livejournal.com]

ummm, what exactly is the question?

I'd like to know why the eggs are less tasty in Calgary. The yolks there are not as rich.

now I'm hungry.

Re: huh?

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

well, in calgary, which is big-farm country in canada, they probably grow their eggs on big factory farms...

Re: huh?

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

p.s. the question is kind of about the rhetoric: what is it about the labels of egg cartons that convinces people to buy eggs from organic, "free-range" hens? my thinking is that it must assuage the bad-press-induced liberal guilt somehow (because "free range" is more humane, and "organic" is more environmentally sound...), but i'm not quite sure how or why, when the message is also widely available that "organic" and "free-range" are kind of bogus terms, and basically meaningless in terms of the hens' living conditions.

Re: huh?

[alice-at-night.livejournal.com]

hmmm. I usually just by the cheapest Large grade-A or AA dozen I find at Safeway (yeah yeah, I'm a typical ugly american consumer, not hip and conscientious like you cool friends.) I don't read the carton past the Large grade-A or AA part. Sometime I buy brown ones, but then remind me of my ex, so not usually.

Going back to, I'm buying big-farm eggs here too, so why do they taste so much richer than the Calgary ones?

Re: huh?

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

i dunno. that's weird. must be something different in the feed. or maybe your garden variety grocery store eggs in california are equivalent to free-range organic eggs elsewhere. it is california, after all; and you are in san francisco, after all...

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

The "access to the outdoors" is bogus - but vegetarian diet should be good. With mad cow disease, they stopped grinding up dead diseased cows and feeding them to other cows, but you gotta do something with the carcasses. My understanding is they feed the diseased cows to the chickens and the diseased chickens to the cows. Or at least a couple years back there was some discussion about whether or not this was safe.

If a 0th order vegetarian is plant-matter, and an N+1th order vegetarian is something that eats an Nth order vegetarian, I try to be a 1st or 2nd order vegetarian.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

yes...i understand that if you're going to have a factory-farmed chicken, it's better if they give that chicken a vegetarian diet (complete with flaxseed!) than a diet consisting of ground up mad cows. but chickens, if left to their own devices, will eat mostly bugs and grubs (i.e. not vegetarian)--creatures that farms have in abundance and don't want, frankly.

i guess i'm just remarking on the ridiculousness of factory farming, which requires all of these inputs to keep an animal healthy that, if left to its own devices (admittedly this would have to be at a much lower density and "rate of production"), will pretty much feed and care for itself, free of charge. you might have to scatter cracked grains once or twice a day...and open the henhouse door in the morning, close it at night, gather the eggs and stuff....

i'm also remarking on the ways in which packaging rhetoric "sells" us a product that is not significantly different in terms of the liberal guilt-triggers of humane-ness to animals and environmental friendliness.

Please forgive me, I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma

[jennaxide.livejournal.com]

Food-producing companies treat animals like any other commodity and they treat people like any other subject of supply and demand, both ideas of which are flawed. Animals will suffer and die if enslaved to continually produce more, and people will grow unhealthily fat if they are manipulated into consuming more. The short answer is, food doesn't work with the capitalist commodity model. But that hasn't stopped anyone from grossly abusing chickens for years to arrive at this conclusion.

That said, how do you feed a nation of urban-dwellers on farm-fresh food? One option is you can sell them socially conscious-appearing food: "free range!" just means that a battery of hundreds of chickens is in a barn with a door- one little door- that they don't ever use. But using it isn't the point, selling the eggs to you because they have one is. But you know all this. I think what you're looking for is that we know the treatment of food animals has been so hellish, and as consumers we feel responsible, and thinking that we can eat a chicken that had a happy chicken life makes the deal of us eating them seem more fair somehow. You're right, it's assuaging liberal guilt. Feeding them flaxseed is downright bourgeois.

At any rate, buy from local farms. When they invite you out to visit the farm, go. I'm going to try to raise chickens-- the risk that I run is that at the end of it all I will have whole bunch of eggs and will be able to neither kill my chickens nor eat any other chicken ever because I've bonded to the damn things, which is what happened with lamb. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

Re: Please forgive me, I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

LOL--i recently read the omnivore's dilemma too...

Re: Please forgive me, I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

LOL--i don't even buy flaxseed (seed, meal or oil) for myself because it's so expensive. i buy other things, and i eat fish.

the fact is, *people* don't work with the capitalist system, which also makes commodities of *us* in various ways, and heavily mystifies that process. (we're so "free" in the u.s.--free to sell our labor on the market, so long as we can do labor that is considered valuable to that market; if not, we become homeless and die.) in the era of biomedical technology, human bodies and body products (eggs, sperm, blood, organs, bone, hair, skin, etc.) are bought and sold much like animals'. it has all become alienable property....stuff we own, instead of stuff we "are," and while it is not currently legal to sell this stuff yourself (though the egg and sperm donation network gets around this technicality in various ways), make no mistake: someone profits from it, when it is removed from your body and transferred to someone else's, or to a petri dish in a lab, or wherever else. i'm not saying the healing and life-sustaining qualities of modern medicine are bad...only that they don't have to be configured as they are. in fact, in some ways i would prefer it if the donor were the one to profit.....or at least if donors profited at all.

Re: Please forgive me, I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma

[jennaxide.livejournal.com]

An excellent point, my dear arguchik. People don't work with the capitalist system. I believe that patenting life for commodification and sale is one of the greatest missteps of humanity in our generation.

Re: Please forgive me, I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

p.s. someone said to me recently, when i was still a vegetarian and was balking at a restaurant's meaty menu, "come on, sharon. don't you know that local is the new vegan?" she was joking, but the phrase has stuck with me.

i tend to find phrases like "X is the new Y" amusing...also pithy and instructive in interesting ways.

Huh

[jennaxide.livejournal.com]

That's a good one- local is the new vegan. At any rate, I heart the Georgetown Liquor Co. for so many wonderful, vegan & dairy free reasons.

You know, as a side point and because I make such a sqwaking about my picky, picky diet: I ate cheap vegan cheerios with orange juice on them the other day because I was out of soy milk. The thing is, I do stuff like that all the time, especially when I travel and my options are limited. If I can eat local and vegan I will, if not I will make do with whatever I have. It's just the milk & the mammal thing that presents me with food options where I can't, you know?

Re: Huh

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

speaking of vegan, and wheat-free: the flying apron just opened a bakery in downtown fremont. yum! it's where le bouchee used to be (the crepe place), if you remember it.

[malafrena.livejournal.com]

Jumping into this discussion a bit late . . . I buy organic eggs (not free range, since I know that's a total lie) because I assume that organically fed hens have a slightly better life. Local would be even better, but I have no clue as to how to get it. Another book for thought: Slow is Beautiful. I think that's the one that talked about local and sustainable farming.

Oliver is damn near a vegetarian, and that's probably because I tried to get our whole family to go vegetarian before I gave up (I was pregnant and also iron-deficient at the time, and eating vegetarian made me a nervous wreck). He asks tough questions.

Q: But why do we eat dead animals?
A: Because we're hungry.

That, in a nutshell, is where I'm at. :)

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

i know you can get locally farmed eggs at the little dairy down at the market, but it's kind of a pain to go down to the market to buy groceries of any kind. the little dairy has a bunch of different kinds of eggs, though--in addition to different varieties of chicken eggs, you can get duck eggs and quail eggs. probably goose, too.

i've had ups and downs, ons and offs with the vegetarianism. i have been a vegetarian, and i may be again, but i'm not now, for similar reasons (i'm not pregnant, but i think i was a little iron deficient, and probably deficient in a couple of other things too. all i know is that i was craving meat--oddly, when i crave meat, it is usually dark turkey meat--and that i started to feel better when i caved to the craving and ate some.