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Posted by Gark...
My wife and I thought that buying our eggs "cage free" was a more humane choice. Turns out, we may have been deluding ourselves. A story from care2.com describes the conditions that even these so-called "humane" practices permit.
Both battery and free-range hens come from hatcheries, where after chicks are sexed in both industries all the males are destroyed. Additionally they all undergo debeaking and force molting, where they’re starved for about two weeks to trick their bodies into starting another egg laying cycle.Thankfully in the Iowa City area there are a number of egg sources that don't treat their chickens this way. My best advice now is "buyer beware", buy locally and get to know your food producer.
One investigation by Jewel Johnson of a cage-free farm resulted in her discovery of what the lives of 10,000 cage free hens were really like.
“The floor under my feet was cement, and the building was freezing cold with no heat in early April. I couldn’t see much for hens at all down the shed…it was just too dark. All I could see was black, all I could hear was crying of hens, all I could smell was ammonia – it was a cold, black cement hell,” she said.
2 comments:
My husband and I have started buying our eggs exclusively from Stringtown grocery in Kalona. Raised locally and ethically, and reasonable at $1.50 a dozen. We get most of our beef there as well.
Exploitation can never be made humane, irrespective of conditions.
"Free-Range" Eggs – Can You Tell The Difference?
"Free-Range" Hen
• Debeaked with a hot bloody blade at one day old with no anesthetic.
• Force molted (intentionally starved to shock the body into another laying cycle).
• Violently packed into a semi and trucked hundreds of miles to an agonizing slaughter when considered “spent” (unable to keep laying eggs at a fast enough pace).
• Denied the opportunity to live a natural life in truly humane care.
• All of her brothers (roosters) are brutally killed as baby chicks simply because they can’t lay eggs.
Battery Cage Hen
• Debeaked with a hot bloody blade at one day old with no anesthetic.
• Force molted (intentionally starved to shock the body into another laying cycle).
• Violently packed into a semi and trucked hundreds of miles to an agonizing slaughter when considered “spent” (unable to keep laying eggs at a fast enough pace).
• Denied the opportunity to live a natural life in truly humane care.
• All of her brothers (roosters) are brutally killed as baby chicks simply because they can’t lay eggs.
http://www.peacefulprairie.org/letter.html
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