Decades ago animal lovers were horrified when social media threw the spotlight on the industry that provided us with eggs. We saw vast warehouses filled with caged hens packed into wire cages that allowed very little movement. There was something soul destroying in this "production line " routine. Food and water - and constant bright light - were exchanged with each hens duty to produce a daily egg, and that rolled down a wire slope to where it could be mechanically harvested. It was not uncommon to see dead birds left rotting for weeks in this scenario.
The industry reacted by promising we could buy our eggs from a new source. Chooks that were allowed to run free and scratch in the dirt out on green pastures. Of course this elevated production costs way above those that applied to caged egg production and eggs from "liberated "hens would cost a little more. The term "Free Range "came into being to signify this production difference.
The problem was that everyone from the egg farmers to the giant supermarkets had a different interpretation of just what that term meant. To some, just freeing hens from those wire cages and allowing them free movement within a barn qualified use of the " Free Range " term to describe the product - and justify a higher price. New terminology entered the lexicon - and "Barn laid " was used to justify the difference from "caged ".
Egg production is a big industry and today the buyer is confused by a host of different descriptions of what terms apply to egg farming. It is estimated that a high proportion of eggs for sale fail to meet the standards that buyers expect, and we are probably paying a premium price for hen conditions that simply do not exist.
The government is thinking of applying a new standard to sort out this mess. It would be far simpler to require the egg farmers to disclose the stocking densities of hens on their farms to give buyers a better perspective of the conditions that apply. The chosen measure will be the number of hens to each hectare.
Obviously, an egg farm that keeps just 1,500 hens to a hectare gives them much more individual space than a farm with 5,000 or an even bigger one with 10,000 per hectare. This does away with all the different terminology that previously differentiated between the conditions that applied. It devolves into a simple calculation of the area involved in egg production divided by the number of hens employed to that task by the farmer - and it is proposed to implement fines of $ 1.1 million for falsification.
There are no plans to ban the practice of egg production from caged hens. Cruel as some may think this is on individual birds it by far the most economical way of farming eggs and customers will clearly have the personal choice of accepting or rejecting when stocking density becomes the standard. It is expected that eggs from a low density egg farm will be at a higher price than those from battery hen production.
When it comes to this "Animal Liberation " issue it all comes down to personal choice. What is important is that when we pay a little more for an anticipated benefit the rules that apply ensure that the conditions we are paying for are not a myth. This new compliance measure must have teeth !
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