Have you ever stood bewildered in the grocery aisle doing your socially conscious best to figure out which eggs come from chickens not in cages, which come from those with access to the outdoors and which were provided with HBO?
Well, you know what we mean. We mention it because the film that took the prize for most viewed in this year’s recent PBS Online Film Festival argues that two terms many consumers have come to rely on when shopping for eggs do not necessarily indicate they came from hens that were treated humanely. “The Story of an Egg” was made by the Lexicon of Sustainability, which describes itself as a “multiplatform project based on a simple premise: People can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability.”
In “The Story of an Egg,” Bay Area poultry farmers David Evans and Alexis Koefoed distinguish between the terms “cage free,” “free range” and “pasture raised.”
Said Evans: “The definition for cage free is a very simple one: Not raised in a cage. … It doesn’t say anything about the environment they are in, it just says something about the environment they’re now not in. Clearly we would hope the environment is better for the chicken outside of the cage, but of course if it’s standing an inch in its own muck and still can’t turn around, it begs the idea of where do we go from there?” The Humane Society agrees — sort of. In 2009, it said, “[Cage-free] systems generally offer hens a significantly improved level of animal welfare than do battery cage systems, though the mere absence of cages sometime isn’t enough to ensure high welfare.”
California’s Proposition 2, passed in 2008, requires that all farm animals be given enough room to lie down, stand up, turn around and extend their limbs. The measure goes into effect in 2015, and egg producers aren’t happy. Mitch Head, spokesman for United Egg Producers, a national trade association, said what the industry wants is a national standard. He said his organization is pushing for compromise federal legislation, crafted in concert with The Humane Society of the United States. The Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments would double the amount of space per hen as well as include areas for nests, perches and scratching. It would also nullify more restrictive state legislation like Proposition 2.