Brooding hen has chicks in nesting box

[hilda-and-evadne]

According to the Daily Mail.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239743/Labour-drop-pledge-banning-battery-hens.html

 

The secret plan to renege on the ban is contained in a leaked letter from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

 

Senior official Richard Jones writes that the economic downturn has prevented farmers converting their buildings and argues a ban 'may severely damage the EU industry by causing a massive shortage of eggs'.

 

The letter says farmers should be allowed to battery farm hens after 2012 provided the eggs are sold only in their national markets.

 

That's very disappointing, if it is true.

[Patricia W]

Consumer power is the most effective change agent. If shoppers continue to turn away from battery eggs then it will be less economic to produce them - I hope!

 

Tricia

[Valkyrie]

Egg production sales will be lower with us lot doing a spot of grow your own! Unfortunately there are those who still would buy battery eggs because they are cheap.

[Lavenders_Blue]

Why does this piece of news not surprise me? It's still very disappointing to hear though. I think it will only be consumer power that can finally force farmers to change their ways, but Koojie is right - sadly there will always be people who will continue to buy battery eggs because they are the cheapest option.

[Ygerna]

I am not surprised by the secret, sneaky underhand way they have decided to drop this. I wish I were.

 

 

but Koojie is right - sadly there will always be people who will continue to buy battery eggs because they are the cheapest option.

 

I think infortunately there are still a lot of people for whom being able to buy a dozen eggs for the same price of half a dozen free range eggs is a necessity. I am not condoning it of course but given the choice they are going to buy the cheaper option. However, I also think that more people are becoming aware of the plight of battery chickens and my hope is that soon the ratio of battery to free range is primarily in favour of the free range variety. A ban would have forced the cost of living to increase; think how many products are made from cheap battery hens and their eggs. An increase in the cost of living would mean that those on benefits, often struggling anyway, would be under greater pressure. I suspect that this is why its been dropped.

[Lavenders_Blue]

I think infortunately there are still a lot of people for whom being able to buy a dozen eggs for the same price of half a dozen free range eggs is a necessity.

 

Yes, this is absolutely correct... of course, assuming that person needs a dozen eggs in the first place (rather than wants them). We have all got so used to buying what we want, when we want it. A couple of generations ago, people would have just gone without until they could afford to buy more. But I don't want to start any arguments about that on here as that's another discussion entirely and I know we're all singing from the same song sheet about the battery eggs anyway!

[Valkyrie]

A friend of mine would come into the category of struggling hard to make ends meet - and I'm sure she wouldn't think twice about battery or not - she doesn't have a choice really. I haven't had enough eggs to give her before, just a couple of odd ones on occasion but if she turns up today she can have loads!

I would guess that a couple of generations ago there wouldn't have been a battery option. It was certainly up and running when I was 3 - my grandparents lived next door to a farm with a "small" battery unit. The noise inside was horrendous, but we couldn't hear it from nan's house and she was only 100 yards away. The only double yolkers I've ever seen came from there. Sadly they caught some horrible disease and the whole lot was wiped out.

When my mum was a child my grandparents had their own chickens - as did so many others during the war - I think battery farming started after the war because so many people didn't have access to fresh eggs - it was powdered stuff.

[Saronne]

A friend of mine would come into the category of struggling hard to make ends meet - and I'm sure she wouldn't think twice about battery or not - she doesn't have a choice really. I haven't had enough eggs to give her before, just a couple of odd ones on occasion but if she turns up today she can have loads!

I would guess that a couple of generations ago there wouldn't have been a battery option. It was certainly up and running when I was 3 - my grandparents lived next door to a farm with a "small" battery unit. The noise inside was horrendous, but we couldn't hear it from nan's house and she was only 100 yards away. The only double yolkers I've ever seen came from there. Sadly they caught some horrible disease and the whole lot was wiped out.

When my mum was a child my grandparents had their own chickens - as did so many others during the war - I think battery farming started after the war because so many people didn't have access to fresh eggs - it was powdered stuff.

 

 

Well, said, Koojie. Many of us are fortunate enough to have that choice - many more don't, and for them it's the cheapest option that wins. Battery eggs are a cheap protein source for many. I don't know if it's right for any of us to second guess whether the less affluent really 'need' those dozen battery eggs or not. I give a discount to my neighbours who get by on a small combined pension. They're too proud to take them for free!

They used to buy battery eggs from the local shop but have stopped since I've been supplying them and comment how much nicer they are.

 

Saronne x

[EmmaJC]

I'm not convinced by the argument that eggs, indeed food in particular should be cheap. Since the 50's the price of food has plummeted, driven largely by farming practices which damage the environment and cause suffering to animals. For many decades this was ignored by the public, who recovering from the effects of rationing were over the moon at the abundance and price of food stuffs which in living memory were special treats. My mother and father both tell stories of the sharing shoes and hopping to school variety and eating a pound of rotten turnips for tea, my grandmother apparently used to take in the butchers bloody aprons for washing for a handful of mince. I’m not suggesting this was a good thing, extremes never are - someone or something ALWAYS suffers. Jobs on the land have been lost to mass industry and gradually we have become deskilled in farming, relying instead on chemicals and cruelty to feed the population, which has boomed to unsustainable numbers because of fertilisers, pesticides and cheap protein.

 

The problem we have now of course is how to feed the massive population without using these dodgy farming practices? The pessimist in me says we probably can't and even if we could it has become too much of an expectation in modern life to eat meat twice a day and have asparagus from Peru with your smoked salmon at Christmas. The sea is being stripped bare and we turn a blind eye to the treatment of our farm animals and the state of our rivers. The fact is that unless we change our diets and attitude to the amount of money we are willing to spend on food then cruel farming practices will continue and our population will swell to even higher, scarier numbers. The Organic movement has become something of a joke too, with people happily picking fun at both the producers and the consumers and writing the whole thing off as something for the wealthy and champagne socialists.

 

The eternal optimist in me however sees people the country over changing their attitudes to food and farming, it's almost impossible to get an allotment now and almost everyone I know either shoots wild game, grows veg in their back gardens and/or has a few chickens pecking around. I expect to see this spread over to America where right now only 1% of chickens are free range (source http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/freerangechickens) and even then there isn't a legal definition of "free range".

 

My optimism has taken a blow with the news of the u-though. I was very excited and proud at the prospect of Europe leading the way on sound farming practices but it seems both farmers and people aren’t ready yet. I live in hope though that in my lifetime we will see a society which is responsible for itself and for the land and animals around us.

 

 

 

- Clarissa, ex-batt

- Jennifer, ex-batt

- Nigella, ex-batt

[Charlottechicken]

Well said EmmaJC I agree with you, meat is too cheap.

 

I really don't think there is anyone in this country who is struggling to find £15 - £20 per week to feed themselves, unless they are homeless. We have lost sight of portion control and what food is actually for (ie fuel) and a lot of folk probably spend more on cigarettes, drink (fizzy pop and alcohol), sweets and newspapers than they would think to spend on food. Pubs offer 24oz steaks and all you can eat, this is obscene.

 

Last week at the supermarket I stood behind a woman, probably mid thirties and well dressed, looked like she was on her lunch break like me, so I started looking at what was going down the conveyor belt. She was purchasing a weeks worth of ready meals, the healthy option ones, several bags of prepared vegetables, like baton carrots etc, then along came the half dozen eggs, which were of course, value ones from caged hens Point being, she was happy to spend on pre prepared foods but not on those with better animal welfare.

 

We don't need an option of this type of cheap food, it needs to stop now.

[Lavenders_Blue]

Thank you EmmaJC and Charlottechicken for saying what I wanted to say much much more eloquently.

[Space Chick]

The thing is, its not just the food industry that uses battery eggs, think of all the vaccinations that use eggs ie. flu jabs.

 

The problem is huge and I find it so upsetting, especially since getting my ex batts and seeing what delightful girls they have become.

 

I think the government have got it wrong