The Humane Society of the United States quest for an egg-free America;
If Washington voters were to approve it, this measure would make it illegal for Washington farmers to raise egg-laying hens in cages. Additionally, regular eggs would be banned from grocery stores.
[…] HSUS is the only cash contributor to the campaign so far—putting $150,000 of its donors’ money into the campaign in January.
Why the Americans don’t kill their enemies is beyond me. They are a society being destroyed from withing and which has no immune system.
Lemmings heading for the cliff. Morons!
They’re cracked
Thanks for the heads up re our current abode…. We’ll have to prepare to start hoarding eggs as we’ve been hoarding incandescent light bulbs.
The eggheads have spoken and the yolk’s on us.
Ken and Aaron,
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t count thy neighbor’s eggs before they’re hatched.
Or something.
Keep on something-or-other that chicken, activists.
Eggs are foundational to our food economy.
Practically everything that is baked has eggs in it, pasta has eggs in it, eggs are used as emulsifiers, clarifiers, as the basis of all mayonnaise cold food dressings since the time of the Caesars; they can be eaten fried, boiled, scrambled, poached, pickled, raw, as meringues or mousses.
Eggs supply all essential amino acids for humans,and provide several vitamins and minerals, including vitamin A, riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid (vitamin B9), vitamin B6, vitamin B12, choline, iron, calcium, phosphorus and potassium.
They are also a single-food source of protein.
All of the egg’s vitamin A, D, and E are in the egg yolk.
The egg is one of the few foods that naturally contain vitamin D.
A large egg yolk contains approximately 60 Calories (250 kilojoules); the egg white contains about 15 Calories (60 kilojoules).
This move by animal rights zealots in the HSUS is nothing less than an attack on the food supply of us all.
Think of the economic impact of all the food industry jobs that would have to be shed if they succeed in their agenda.
How do ‘progressives’ deal with organizations they don’t like? Maybe those socially-acceptable tactics could be used against the HSUS.
I think a nice public shaming via internet might be the best possible course of action. Air out the dark recesses, so to speak.
Thanks for the heads up Kate.
Do these bird-brained imbeciles not realize that they are running around like “chickens with their heads cut off”? Do they not realize how many eggs are consumed in North America and how much of the food industry depends on eggs?
I used to raise “free range” 100% organic chickens and sell the eggs. But it is a tiny industry, very labour intensive and more suited to the small hobby farmer — it couldn’t begin to supply the demands of the food industry.
I also used to butcher my own chickens — the old fashioned way: you put their head on stump in the barnyard, slowly extend the neck until they are calm and unsuspecting, then whack! The head is swiftly lopped off with an axe and the headless chicken goes running around the yard as if in search of its missing head.
Reminds me of the animal rights people — their heads have been unsuspectingly lopped off by Left ideologues and they are running around chaotically like headless chickens.
I’m not a pinko, and I have raised free range chickens for many years for eggs. I followed the link above, which lead to another link (http://humanewatch.org/index.php/site/post/peck-peck-pecking_away/) that had the following arguments:
1. Hen mortality rate: Dr. Joy Mench, a leading Animal Science professor at UC-Davis, tells the Sacramento Bee that cage-free hens die at more than twice the rate of caged hens, likely the result of increased exposure to one another (and to their own manure).
2. Broken bones: Dr. Mench adds that cage-free hens, left to jump around the barn, suffer high rates of broken bones, as high as 67 percent in one study.
3. Stress: Scientists at Australia’s Sydney University found that free-range and “open-barn” chickens experience just as much stress as caged birds, since they have to deal with extra pressures like extreme temperatures, parasites, and predators.
As someone who has *raised* chickens, I can comment that every single one of these “facts” is false.
It seems that both sides in this debate are lying.
The underlying problem is that in today’s world everyone wants access to a wide variety of food for next to nothing. McDonald’s isn’t going to buy eggs from a free range operation when they can get them for half the price from a cage operation. And their customers have such bad taste in food that they couldn’t care less where the eggs came from as along as the meal is less than $2.00.
My kids grew up eating free range eggs. Serve them an egg from a caged chicken without telling them, and they will know instantly what they are eating. The difference in taste and quality is huge. My kids won’t even eat eggs in restaurants because they cannot stand the bland taste and the pale colour.
When it comes to food – and again, I’m no pinko – I do prefer the French model, where people are willing to spend a larger portion of their income to get good quality produce as compared to North America.
However in North America the average Joe is far more impressed by the *quantity* of food on his plate, and at the lowest price he can get it, than the quality of the food.
“The underlying problem is that in today’s world everyone wants access to a wide variety of food for next to nothing.”
If our “next-to-nothing” food prices in the 1st world start to cost big money then 100s of millions of people in the 3rd world are going to starve to death.
Count on it.
TJ I look at it more as a supply issue. Can free range meet market demands? I wouldn’t care too much if eggs were a buck a dozen more.
I bought a roast recently. A four and a half pound sirloin roast for 13.50. I asked myself if the rancher gave the d-mn steer away?
TJ, it might depend on who’s doing the raising. Still I must acknowledge superior knowledge, I’ve never raised a chicken.
Aside from the known superiority in both quality and -cost- of free-range poultry, the question arises: Do we want to make free-range vs. factory choices ourselves at the store, or do we want the HSUS making them for us with propaganda programs aimed at legislators.
I vote for me deciding myself, thanks. Every time government decides for me, it turns out badly.
I had free range chickens also,till one night I discovered that I had free range foxes.That was the last year that I had chickens. I also remember the morning that my dad went out to the chicken house and a badger had burrowed up through a concrete floor and murdered half the hens.He filled its burrow up with water and blew its head off when it came up for air.He didnt get his chickens back,but the badger didnt get anymore hens either.
We shouldn’t egg them on.
spike1
” badger had burrowed up through a concrete floor and murdered half the hens.”
Since you are want to criticize the grammar and spelling of others on a blog of all things, I think it’s fair to point out that Badgers never ‘murder’ anything or anyone.
on topic:
Phantom has it right, this is and should be a consumer/market decision. As always, this is about MORE government under the guise of doing something helpful.
btw, I’ve got two birds, and both ALWAYS return to their cage when it’s time to lay eggs.
TJ, No argument there — free range is by far superior quality, with rich deep yellow-red yolks vis a vis the anemic store bought. Richer still if you stick a few roosters in with the hens and the eggs are fertilized. When we moved off the farm the store-bought appeared almost nauseating.
But as other have pointed out, free-range simply won’t meet market demands. It’s a personal choice.
$15 Trillion in debt, and growing fast.
Annual deficits running in excess of $1.6 Trillion . . . compliments of a President who has the economic knowledge of a pig fart.
And some Americans are confused about egg production.
A nation where priorities are priorities.
Spike 1….”free range foxes”…I gotta remember that ‘un. It’s part of my image….colourful deadly, accurate ways to express.
TJ
You must have the only laying hens in Antarctica….no coyotes……
Yeah, I think you live in fantasyland…
Indiana Homez; i have never critisized anyones grammer or spelling on this blog,only stupid posts.You say that the badger didnt “murder”the hens.Well,I can tell you one thing,it didnt screw them to death.
You forgot about SF and the “hats for bats” issue Fred. I think they’ve got the BIG issues covered:P
spike 1, “murder” is a legal term and doesn’t apply to farm animals. The badger killed the hens but he didn’t “murder” them; otherwise you could have called the cops and got Mr. Badger put in jail for life!
“and the headless chicken goes running around the yard as if in search of its missing head.”
so this isn’t just an old wives tale. I’ve never seen it in person but I suspect in a macabre way it is rather funny.
I’ll get back to this after I whip up some scrambled EGGS and home cooked beans.
spike1
“Indiana Homez; i have never critisized anyones grammer or spelling on this blog,”
fair enough, I must have confused you with someone else. carry-on
beagle, it is quite funny — especially if the headless chicken goes running in the direction of an unsuspecting spectator…
beagle, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” is an actual occurrence. I have fond memories of retrieving chickens when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My mother would help my aunt and uncle butcher chickens. It was the children’s responsibility to get the chickens back to the table for butchering.
Oz makes some great points about the importance of eggs to the entire food chain. That chain is already shaking from the idiotic bio-fuels nonsense. Millions of tons of corn and other crops are no longer exported from the US; they are turned into second rate fuel. One of the knock-on effects from this ridiculous decision was a rise in world wide food prices that affected many countries in the Middle East. If the media aren’t lying to me, there’s been some slight unrest there recently, much of which is related to rising food prices.
TJ:
Like everyone here, I applaud your efforts to produce a quality product and offer it on the market. I hope you offer equal support to my ability to choose between varying grades and qualities, at various prices. Let’s use beef, for example. I buy a lot of A or AA beef, which is cheaper and less tasty than AAA or AAAA. (It also has less fat, which is the main reason I buy it.) I can get a vacuum-packed 6 lb striploin for about $18. It’s OK – not great, but OK – and I try to jazz up the flavour with marinades, spices, and sauces. But when I want a really great grilled steak, I go to the quality grocer, where my $18 will buy a little more than 1/2 lb steak ($34/lb last I saw for AAAA), and that’s fine with me. I’ll trade off the cost vs. the quality. Shouldn’t I get to make the same decision with eggs?
My wife goes to Buffalo once a month, and always come back with 3 dozen eggs (she does a lot of baking, and they’re apparently half the Cdn price there). In a cake with flour, sugar, flavourings, etc., do you really think you can taste the difference between the free range eggs and caged ones? I doubt it, but if the price of eggs doubled, she’d bake a lot less.
“Freedom of choice – it’s what I want” pace Devo.
“Spike 1
Hate to be picky but “cant” is incorrect. It should be “can’t” which is short form for can not.”
Sorry Spike, it was a guy named ‘tommyboy’ who did that to you.
BTW, how’s Bumblebee?
Perhaps we can go the HSUS offices and throw a few . . . eggs.
ricardo at 1:14 PM, that brings back memories from so many years ago watching my dad do the same thing. It was truly amazing (and entertaining) to watch the poor things run around without their heads on. I suspect there are legions of people who have never witnessed chicken beheadings who have no idea what that old saying really means.
Are the animals being abused? If not, I see no reason why urbanites would pass a law just to make themselves feel good. If they prefer “cage-less” chicken eggs, then purchase them.
I don’t know why the caged hen sings and I don’t care.
jesus christ…a thread with half a dozen egg snobs…..worse than wine or cheese snobs…try to remember that pigs LOVE truffles….crazy about ’em.
sigh….just another sign of the all pervading decadence in our western societies…
And BTW, my dad also practiced the alternative method, namely just grabbing the bird and twisting its neck so as to break it. A chicken running around with its head dangling down is just as funny.
Also BTW, I think that $150,000 could buy a lot of hours with a good shrink for a lot of PETA types. I wonder if you can specify a target for your donations?
pasta has eggs in it
As I’ve always understood it, noodles made without eggs are pasta, while noodles made with eggs are egg noodles.
Osumashi Kinyobe at 4:43 PM: “I don’t know why the caged hen sings and I don’t care.”
=====================
Caged hens don’t sing. Neither do free range hens. A incessant cackle is all ya’ get, especially right after they lay an egg.
as a boy on the farm i learned two different methods of hypnotizing chickens…it were a hoot to fill the barnyard(for such it was)with a score of chickens sitting mesmerized…and when the cows came through from pasture to their milking stalls?…well i tell you…we laffed like madmen…i can remember the tears coursing down our little faces…..
anyone else ?…or am i the only chickenmaster with this arcane majick left in this country?
A thread full of egg puns? Right, let’s get ’em ova with…
A headless rooster followed me for quite some distance in 1949.
john begley, I never did learn the art of hypnosis on chickens, but did try to capture a chicken using an apple box propped up with a stick that had a string tied to it. Well, the box knocked the thing out, I thought it was dead and was going to be in for it. But, then it woke up a scuttled away.
If this idiocy spreads we will have to have chicken coops in the bush, much like there were stills in the 1920s. 😉
What is it with people falling for this nonsense. Too far removed from the manure pile behind the barn I guess.
In Kensington Market I understand the live chicken vendors hit them with bats. The animal rights protesters, not the chickens.
“as a boy on the farm i learned two different methods of hypnotizing chickens”
How?? C’mon. Please, you gotta share that.
mhb
Louise, I was trying to make a Maya Angelou joke but I guess it didn’t work. D’oh.
“A headless rooster followed me for quite some distance in 1949.” – that must have made for some interesting nightmares.
I guess it’s difference between left and right again. We may both agree that free range chickens/eggs are better in some way but only one of us wants to force everyone to make that choice. Personally, I do care about the treatment of farm animals that hit my table and I’d prefer they get a reasonable standard of care free from pain and stress. I choose foods when I can that meet my personal preferences and I hope that enough people will do the same so that economies of scale com into play. I will try to educate people (how I hate that phrase, it sounds so condescending) but I know that when the tire hits the road I will buy what I can afford. I prefer to treat animals humanely but I also prefer to live.
As for me, I can agree with Fozzy Bear and the protesting of the rubber chicken manufacturers…
There just aren’t enough of them any more.
Wokka-wokka!
” What’s yellow and sleeps alone?”
Yolko Ono.
An interesting headless chicken story here; http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php
While I would enjoy a good chicken dinner, have not had one for at least a year. The reason is that the way the chickens are raised, in the cages that they can hardly move, the stress of the suckers must affect the meat somehow. Just my thinking.
While I would enjoy a good chicken dinner, have not had one for some time.
The reason is that the way the chickens are raised, in the cages that they can hardly move, the stress of the suckers must affect the meat somehow. Just my thinking.
Though never fear, a free range farmer is near. Since moving back to Calgary, things will change.
Iowa Jim:
You are technically correct, but many canned and highly processed pastas do contain eggs or at least egg whites. You won’t find eggs in the better dried pastas, but you will eggs in cheap ones.
Exactly what Mr. Rat said @7:45. I don’t eat pork because I know that pigs are highly intelligent, they make wonderful pets, they are often raised and slaughtered in dreadful conditions, and also they are smaller than cows, meaning that a certain amount of beef translates to less guilt than the equivalent amount of bacon.
Rats are also intelligent and make good pets; I’d rather have a pet rat than a pet rabbit. I don’t eat rat either.
Well, what can one say. Double the sentence, double the fun.