Not eating meat is easy to explain - an animal needs to die in order to produce meat. Not eating any animal products at all usually warrants a slightly longer discussion. Especially when it comes to free-range eggs. Chicken lay eggs anyway, and free-range chicken are happy chicken, right? But, are free-range eggs really ethical?
Growing up in a rural setting, I don’t remember ever not knowing where meat came from. And I don’t remember ever eating it. For me, it wasn’t a choice, and I never made a big deal about it. I simply checked if something was meat or not when I was offered food, and then refused to eat it. Which led to a hide-and-seek game I played with my parents until I was old enough to start preparing my own food.
I never had the same problem with eggs, or dairy for that matter. In my mind, no animals were harmed to get those products, and so I didn’t feel bad about eating them. In a way, I was right. My family had a small flock of chickens, with no roosters to turn those eggs into baby chicks. They roamed freely in our backyard and laid eggs, which I then picked up from the nest every morning.
Once I moved out to live on my own and started buying my eggs in the store, I never considered the eggs I was eating might not come from such a happy background. Until a very memorable moment in my early twenties, when I cracked an egg for the cookies I was baking, and blood, or bloodied egg white, poured out. I felt sick to my stomach and vowed to never eat an egg again in my life. I did some very brief research, which immediately led me to learn about battery cages. That was enough for me. My now husband tried to assure me that I simply needed to switch to free-range eggs, but I didn’t care. Like with meat, it was no longer an issue of where the eggs I was eating came from, but a repulsion to eggs in general.
Fast forward to almost a decade later, when I decided to reevaluate my position on whether or not free-range eggs are ethical.
Battery Cages
Before we dig right in, there are a few important facts I want to address. Firstly, battery cages are banned in the UK, where I live, as well as in the EU and a number of other countries worldwide. I strongly believe that this will become a global standard in a not-so-distant future, and am appalled that some developed countries still operate in this way. If you’re not familiar with the concept of battery cages, here is a quick summary:
“Battery cages are a form of high-volume, extreme confinement. The standard battery cage houses up to ten chickens, who live their entire lives on barren wire; each hen has approximately sixty-seven square inches of space, less than a letter-sized sheet of notebook paper. At the typical factory farm, battery cages are stacked side by side, several cages high in long rows in windowless buildings. Tens of thousands of chickens can occupy a single building, and a single factory farm may contain millions of laying hens.”
A Worldwide View of Animal Law, Wagman and Liebman
Battery cages were outlawed in the UK by the European Commission in 2012 under the Welfare of Laying Hens Directive, and are still banned at the time of writing this article.
The 4 Types of Egg Production Methods
So, the different types of egg production methods I will focus on here are cage, barn, free range, and organic. Here’s a quick breakdown of the conditions in each of these production types:
Laying cage egg production: Essentially, laying cages are an upgrade of the former battery cages. This updated system now provides 750cm² per bird along with a nest box for the birds to lay their eggs in, perching space for the birds to sleep on and a scratching area to perform natural behaviours.
Barn egg production: In the barn system hens are able to move freely around the house. The EU Welfare of Laying Hens Directive stipulates a maximum stocking density of 9 hens per square metre of usable area. Perches for the hens must be installed to allow 15 centimetres of perch per hen. Litter must account for one third of the ground surface. This is used for scratching and dust bathing.
Free-range egg production: The EU egg marketing legislation stipulates that for eggs to be termed free range, hens must have “continuous daytime access to open-air runs. Open-air runs must be mainly covered with vegetation and not used for other purposes other than orchards, woodland and livestock grazing”. Hens must also be provided with next boxes. Adequate perches, providing 15 centimetres of perch per hen, must also be provided. Litter must be provided, accounting for one-third of the ground surface - this is used for scratching and dust bathing.
Organic egg production: This includes free-range hens that are also fed an organically produced diet, and are ranged on organic land.
Are Free-Range Eggs Ethical?
So, free-range does sound a lot better than cages or barn egg production, right?
In theory it does, and if you insist on including eggs in your daily diet, then free range is definitely the way to go. But there are quite a few valid concerns regarding free-range egg production.
1. Beak trimming is still common practice - almost all young hens have “part of their beaks burned off without anaesthetic to stop them pecking at the other hens in their cramped, traumatised flocks”. Okay, let’s rewind a bit. Why cramped?
Free-range hens are still housed in free-range sheds, which in theory they use freely whenever they feel like going inside and then back out. These sheds can contain up to 9 birds per square metre (that’s like 14 adults living in a one-room flat) and still be labelled free range. In practice, hens may be too crammed in and too traumatised to even find the few exit holes. But, at least they can’t hurt each other in frustration with their beaks trimmed off.
2. Exhaustion - hens in the wild lay about 20 eggs per year, but to meet the high demands of modern consumers, hens nowadays are made to lay closer to 500 eggs annually, through high-protein feed, and near-constant lighting. This exhausts their bodies in a matter of months, which are then discarded (sent to slaughter) and replaced with another to continue the cycle. The average natural lifespan of a chicken is 8 to 12 years.
3. Male chicks - they are financially worthless to egg farmers and therefore killed within hours of their birth. On a daily basis unimaginable numbers get unceremoniously tossed into a machine and ground up alive, or gassed by carbon dioxide, or simply dumped in a bin bag and left to suffocate
It seems the main problem with free range is that the laws are still not strict enough, and farmers are still looking for loopholes that would allow them to maximise their profit at the expense of animal well-being, while staying within the law, right?
So that brings us back to the age-old question - can I get a few hens, keep them in my backyard as pets and pick up their unfertilised eggs when they produce them?
If we’re being completely honest with ourselves, I don’t think a lot of us have the space, time, skills, knowledge or patience to pull that off. Peta has already answered this question very thoroughly. To sum it up:
- Chickens require specialised veterinary care—something that many veterinarians, who are used to working with dogs and cats, will not be able to provide.
- To improve the quality and prolong the length of chickens’ lives, they should be fed their own eggs, including the shells, so that they can gain back the nutrients they lose by laying eggs so often. Moreover, for chickens who are most susceptible to reproductive issues, the use of contraception should be considered in order to limit their egg production.
- The problem of male chicks persists - you shouldn’t do business with hatcheries. In the egg industry, it’s common for sickly chicks to be tossed out and left to die, while male chicks, who don’t produce eggs and are seen as disposable, are often ground up while they’re still alive. Doing business with hatcheries encourages them to continue to breed and hurt chickens. The only ethical way to obtain chickens is to adopt them from animal shelters or rescue groups that have the birds’ best interests at heart.
We’ve become so desensitised to the cruelty that surrounds industry farming that anything that doesn’t involve battery cages seems “not so bad after all”. But that doesn’t mean free-range eggs are ethical.
So, what now? If you must include eggs in your diet, always go with free range. But not all free-range farmers are the same - it's important to do your research and make sure you know in what conditions the chickens are being kept.
My rule of thumb is, live and let live. And when it comes down to keeping hens in my backyard just to eat a few eggs a week, which aren’t exactly a health food anyway, or simply not eating eggs, for me it’s a no brainer. You don’t need eggs to be healthy and there is virtually no way to get eggs that wouldn’t be associated with at least some degree of cruelty.
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