Are performance enhancing drugs helping the chickens?
According to an as yet unreleased survey on the health of commercial egg laying chickens in the news today:
The survey results are not due to be released until November, but industry sources told the Sunday Star-Times that early findings show that battery-farmed birds are generally healthier [than free range chickens] because the controlled conditions prevent the spread of disease. This was despite both groups receiving the same level of care.
I’m not disputing the findings. It won’t change my dietary habits. The animal rights issues for caged is enough is enough to put me off them. (Although health is obviously an important animal rights issue too.) I do wonder though if the battery hens healthiness stems from their routine exposure to antibiotics and lack of exposure to anything in the outside would. If you live a drugged and hermetically sealed life you’d probably be reasonably healthy too - at least according to some measurements.
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks about Rosie the free range chicken (I’ve tangentially segued into broiler chickens rather than egg laying ones here for a moment):
I also visited Rosie the organic chicken at her farm in Petaluma, which turns out to be more animal factory than farm. She lives in a shed with twenty thousand other Rosie’s, who, aside from their certified organic feed, live lives little different from that of any other industrial chicken. Ah, but what about the “free-range” lifestyle promised on the label? True, there’s a little door in the shed leading out to a narrow grassy yard. But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old—for fear they’ll catch something outside—and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.
Pollan terms this type of food ‘the supermarket pastoral’. Because it says ‘organic’ on the label we imagine happy chickens pecking away in long grass, perhaps with a farmer in a black singlet singing country and western songs to them while he or she collects eggs.
The question this survey raises is what happens when chickens get a halfway life - neither the false ideal that now exists only on small, local farms, nor the drugs and lack of exposure to diseases out in the real world?
September 21st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Yet more green washing from the battery hen industry.
Mental health of battery hens is certainly way down there, and they also suffer from osteoporosis and other physical ailments from being crammed in cages unable to exercise. The battery egg industry (aka the Egg Producers Federation) and their allies in government and NAWAC stated that mortality rates were higher in free range hens in New Zealand, based solely on an unpublished report from an industry vet. The report stated that the vet had got his data from free range, barn and battery producers. Odd that the largest free range producer and the largest barn producer had not been approached. Odd too that an official information act request for the raw data revealed that it could not be found, and MAF had not even checked it.
So call me cynical, but I would sooner trust Winston Peters than the battery egg industry or MAF or NAWAC. They have also been someone “economical with the truth” in their press releases stating lameness in New Zealand broilers is not as high as it is in Europe. It is actually a lot higher; 40% visibly lame birds, as opposed to 24%.
So no, I don’t think they are more healthy because they are taking antibiotics, based on their past record, I consider it highly likely that the entire report is a fabrication.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
I think it shows that nothing is ever completely clear-cut in these issues. You are right Frog that “free-range” may not necessarily be anything like what people think. A free-range egg farm will be set up near our place soon, 4000 chickens. They will only be allowed out when the land is dry enough, and knowing that heavy land I doubt they will see much of the outdoors. But they will still have a “free-range” label and get twice the price in the shops.
If you really want free-range, it is probably best to buy from a local producer you know or keep your own hens. It may be debatable whether supermarket-bought “free-range” eggs are really worth the extra money over the standard variety.