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

[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.