 |
Organic eggs come from stress free chooks
You will find all the latest information here, and we will be updating things regularly as more becomes available. First, let's focus on what is (and is not) meant by "Animal Considerate Production" and how that affects the food we get from our grade (in this case - organic eggs). Many people who hear the term "Animal Considerate" will probably think we may be attributing human feelings and emotions to animals and so treating them more as pets than livestock. Actually, I used to think this way myself. I remember once visiting a small "hobby" farm that was having problems with pasture management. It had a total of three steers and being in a rather cheeky mood I asked: "What are their names?" I wasn't really expecting the reply "Mick, Mack and Paddywack!", but at the time it only reinforced my belief that 'animal considerate' producers were just a bit Loopy. This outlook changed, however, when I started working with Free-range egg producers. Their animals were certainly not pets and their objectives were strikingly clear. Many livestock producers will tell you that animal stress is an important consideration and this is especially true for production of organic eggs. They seek to design a system in which animals experience the least stress possible, by mimicking (to some extent) the conditions they would encounter in the Wild. This includes being able to move about freely, searching for food, socializing normally with others of their kind and even being able to choose the types of things they eat. Naturally critics will say that chickens are no longer jungle fowl and even if they were, we could never design a commercially productive environment that could mimic a jungle, because a jungle has (among other things) predators and diseases that would seriously harm production. OK, so we do need to also provide a safe, protected environment as well. Producing organic eggs certainly requires that you care for your chickens , but proponents of animal considerate systems reply to this criticism simply: "True, but why does this mean we need to be cruel and design systems with no similarities to their natural environment?" The aim in producing organic eggs is equally simple - take advantage of the animal's natural behavior to optimize productivity without either high capital investment, or high management inputs (and so also high cost) for beak-trimming, and the use of drugs or other synthetic inputs. In short, create a system in which the animals do much of the 'work' by behaving naturally and without stress. Stress is cumulative. Chickens are beak-trimmed to stop them fighting and injuring each other, but they only do this because of the stress caused by over-crowding. So one stress is added to another. So if stress is so bad, why do so many producers ignore it? the answer lies in the relationship between unit and volume production. This relationship is found in everything from fruit trees to livestock production: As the number of plants, trees or animals per unit area (or volume for things like fish) increases, production per plant or per animal declines, but the total production per unit area increases. The bottom line is that the more chickens you can crowd together, the more eggs you get in spite of the harmful effects on the productivity of individual chickens. There are, of course, several flaws in the logic that bases production on this relationship, but the important point is that animal considerate production seeks only to reverse this thinking. In doing so, we really are producing organic eggs, because Organics is really about knowing how our food is produced and that, in the process, no harm has been caused to the environment, other people or the organisms responsible for that production. This is important to anyone who cares about their food, but especially so in French cooking. Following the 'industrialization' of egg production, much of the information and experience about free-range production was lost. Reclaiming this knowledge will take time and research. There are several ways in which you can participate in this process:
|
