Eggs - they have got to be kidding

[ManlyBacker]

I don't know how other consumers of eggs feel but today I am angry. Farming food is the way of the world but I would like to know that the animals involved are treated a bit better than living out their lives in torture chamber conditions.

I buy eggs that are labelled Free Range for this reason. The expectation is that a bird has the ability to move about. But not any longer.

From the Sun Herald:
Chickens will be farmed at 20,000 birds a hectare - 13 times more crowded than the current code - and still qualify as ''free range'' under changes to egg industry standards to be introduced this month.

The Australian Egg Corporation, which represents about 400 producers nationally, argues that without the new poultry standard production of free-range eggs would decline - and prices would rise.

Full article: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/farmers-crack-the-free-range-code-20120414-1wzyc.html#ixzz1s9j6dgb0


Now one hectare is 10,000 sq metres. That means 'free range' thanks to the AEG equates to each bird getting 0.5 sq mt.

That is just BS.

 

[Dan]

Each bird probably takes up a space of about .2 by .3 of a mt, which then means really the bird has about .3 of a mt to walk around in.

 

[Dan]

Some may say that's a Paltry amount........ maybe I should have written that as poultry

Thank you I'm here all week, tell you friends

 

[tookey]

Might as well just call them battery free range hens. This change is being pushed by money hungry pricks like the Inghams who supply free range eggs to Coles and woolworths.

Buy as little as possible from the big chains and instead buy milk, fruit & vegs and free range eggs from one fo the many farmers markets around these days. Better quality and taste and you support NSW farmers.

 

[Dan]

Better still just put a chook pen in your backyard with 2 chooks and get your own free range eggs

 

[wombatgc]

I am lucky enough to have bit of land, and couldn't wait to get the chooks going. Obviously the fresh and great tasting eggs are a bonus, but chooks are great pets.You watch them for any length of time, and there running around having a great time.
The bloke up the road has two chooks in a cage not much bigger than a suitcase!...It's only a matter of time before I chooknap them and let them roam like they should.

 

[Dan]

I am lucky enough to have bit of land, and couldn't wait to get the chooks going. Obviously the fresh and great tasting eggs are a bonus, but chooks are great pets.You watch them for any length of time, and there running around having a great time.
The bloke up the road has two chooks in a cage not much bigger than a suitcase!...It's only a matter of time before I chooknap them and let them roam like they should.

Too many cats up here but it's legal to keep chops in your yard up here. They are brown snake magnets though. My mate Luke has a chook pen on his block it's a big pen about the size of a garage and has about 5 or 6 chookz in there every month he has a brown snake in there trying to get at them or already with a few dead.

I wanted to make a pen an put two chookz in it on my block but given the neighbour 2 doors up had a brown snake in her house last week and there was another seen in a few houses down the road, I am rethinking it.

 

[bob dylan]

The cocks that make these rules make me sick.

 

[ManlyBacker]

Thanks to those who 'befowled' this thread Stuff them (not the chooks) - I'm starting a campaign to rid Australia of these clowns. I've never been a radical but how stupid do they take us for? Seriously, animals should have some basic quality of life.

 

[globaleagle]

I'll sign your petition!

Time to end puppy mills too!!

 

[Dan]

I'll sign your petition!

Time to end puppy mills too!!

And worm farms, how cruel

 

[Stevo]

I'm probably in the minority here but i have no problems at all buying cage eggs.

If a chicken is born into a cage, and dies in a cage, i don't really care. lol

Hang on, that sound slightly barbaric. Bugger it, too many of you blokes have seen chicken little imo!