Free range eggs

I wrote to the Canberra Times this morning. First time in a little while. There was an article in there about eggs, and a new push to finally outlaw the practice of keeping hens in tiny cages, at least here in the Australian Capital Territory. My letter was in response to one very particular lie pumped out by the battery hen industry, namely that the sales figures prove that people don't really care, that they prefer cage eggs. Here's what I wrote:

Only 25% of eggs sold are free-range or barn-laid ("A paltry existence", Canberra Times, 18 April 2009, Forum pp 6-7). The Australian Egg Corporation says this proves that there is a lack of demand, that most people "overwhelmingly choose to buy cage eggs". Wrong. You just have to go into any supermarket to see the truth. The reason people buy cage eggs is because they can't get anything else. The shelves of organic, free range, barn-laid and other more humanely produced eggs are always bare, despite their much higher price. The choice is usually cage eggs or no breakfast. Personally I'd rather go hungry than eat the product of such cruelty.

I hope they print it...

But there's a whole lot more to say about this that I didn't put into my 113 words. Partly because letters to the editor have to be short to have a chance of getting printed, and partly because it would confuse my point. One letter, one point. But here I can ramble on as much as I like, and nobody is going to censor me or edit me or anything. You can stop reading if you get bored. Go on. Feel free.

John Stanhope (our Chief Minister, for any readers not from the Canberra area) says there's no point in outlawing battery cages for chickens in the ACT, because all that will happen is that they will move 5km over the border into NSW. Let's just unpack that argument for a moment.

Firstly it's one of those horrible arguments that says "I can't do it because none of the others will". In other words, we should wait until the other states & territories change their laws before considering changing ours. No thoughts of leadership or taking a stand.

But why not? Dig deeper. Stanhope, like most politicians, would be very happy to make a public ethical stand if he thought it would be to his advantage, particularly his electoral advantage. His primary motivation is staying in power, not any thought about improving the state of affairs in the ACT or the wider world. So what's in it for him? Why would it bad for him if Pace Farms moved across the border?

Jobs? Hardly. If Pace Farms moves from Parkwood to Queanbeyan, nobody needs to lose their job. Half of the workers might already live in NSW for all I know.

Taxes? I wouldn't know. I thought the ACT Government didn't have the right to tax local people or businesses, but there are exceptions, taxes that aren't taxes... Rates for example. Perhaps Pace Farms pays a lot in rates and it would affect the local economy to lose that income?

There was something in the article about Pace Farms representing 50% of the ACT's agricultural otuput. (Let's leave aside the linguistic weirdness that says a bunch of enormous metal sheds filled with millions of shit-covered sickly chickens squashed into tiny wire cages is agriculture. How can you compare that—or any of the other disgusting industrial animal production systems—with a genuine farm?) So what? The ACT, like the District of Columbia, is a small, artificial, administrative region, created for the sole purpose of ensuring that the national capital is not part of any one of the several states that make up the federation. The idea that it should be self-contained, that it should compete with the states on the same footing, is ridiculous. We have very little agriculture because we have almost no agricultural land. The ACT is mostly mountainous national parks, and the rest is almost all urban or suburban. The few tiny hobby farms inside the territory are drought-stricken dust bowls. Of course we have next to no agricultural production, but that seems pretty right to me.

Could there be corruption at work here? Surely not. The Australian Egg Corporation probably lobbies pretty hard, and they probably make donations to both major political parties, but can't imagine that there's anything corrupt beyond that standard, unremarkable level. Nothing to justify Stanhope on the one hand saying that he abhors the practice of battery chicken production, and on the other steadfastly, resolutely refusing to do anything about it.

Maybe it's the unions? Maybe the union that covers the workers at Pace Farms would lose members and power if the business moved across the border. Maybe they would have to change branches or something? Could that be the reason?

Anyway, enough speculation. Let's backtrack and try to look at this from a larger perspective.

Battery chicken production—and indeed all factory-farming—is cruel. That should be enough to have it stopped everywhere, immediately. Cruelty to animals is something I find very hard to understand. Industrial-scale cruelty to animals is unconscionable. Despicable. Inhumane. Dehumanising to those who do it. It diminishes all of us for as long as we allow it to continue.

It is also dirty and produces pollution. It spreads disease. It also—and on this I am 100% certain—produces vastly inferior eggs. They are less nutritious, they are not as good for cooking or baking, and they don't taste as good. (Rick Stein did a blind test on his cooking program and there was no doubt whatsoever of the taste difference. The chef who prepared them also commented on the texture and colour, how they hung together, and so on.) Their only advantage is that they are cheap.

Europe is already moving on this. Of course there are some glitches and peculiarities in the process (like Sweden outlawing cages and then importing cage eggs from Poland), but these are temporary and will be sorted out. With determination and cooperation, it can all be done. Egg producers needn't even lose money on it in the long run. They charge more for free-range eggs. If prices are too low compared to costs, they will go out of business. If people won't buy expensive eggs, then there will be adjustments, but my guess is that it will turn out to be like petrol for their cars: people will pay pretty much whatever it costs, and changes in demand will be relatively small.

But the Egg Corporation are right about one thing. As soon as people stop buying cage eggs, the egg producers will have to change. They know perfectly well what I pointed out in my letter: that demand for free-range eggs exceeds supply. They have already been trying to get around that with misleading labelling, and I suspect that "barn-laid" is an example of that. When faced with a choice between cheap cage eggs and expensive free-range egss, many people will choose to pay more for the more ethical, healthier and better-quality product. Good.

The problem is that when faced with a choice between cheap cage eggs and an empty shelf labelled free-range eggs, far too many people buy the inferior, unhealthy product of industrialised cruelty to animals. And that has to stop.