Cage-Free Is All The Rage
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 08.12.07
Sunday's New York Times has cracked open story on the latest US consumer fad. Cage-free eggs, "from chickens raised in large, open barns instead of stacks of small wire cages, have become the latest addition to menus at universities, hotel chains like Omni and cafeterias at companies like Google. The Whole Foods supermarket chain sells nothing else, and even Burger King is getting in on the trend."
Apparently there are shortages as a result of the spike in demand. And, as you'd expect, the egg industry had originally moved to chicken skyscrapers (lap-top sized cages, stacked in rows, warehouse-like) because of reduced capital and operating costs. Now, because of consumer awareness, they are being asked to flatten not the cost structure, but the chicken houses, putting the bird herd (our term for flightless avian roamers) on the loose.
The unanswered question is: how does this trend affect chicken manure management options? Hopefully poop power, as enabled by the caged operations, will be pursued as well.
Via:: New York Times. Image credit:: Feathersite.
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Really? This is new in the USA? And it's a good thing?
In the UK at least we see 'cage free' or as we call it, 'Barn eggs' as a bad thing as that's the term used to indicate chickens which although they aren't in cages, still spend all their lives inside a large, often crowded shed.
We have 'free range' chickens instead usually which may be still as crowded a barn as 'cage free' but with the added option for the chickens to go outside.
You can get free range eggs everywhere and supermarkets have stocked them at least a decade or so. ie. it's no fad.
You should have said "Cage-Free Is All The Range."
Of all the self-indulgences for which one need not confine and torture another animal - if you were wallopped by a cartoon mallet and forgot that there was ever a food item called egg, your life would not change at all and the world would be a better place. It will incrementally improve the short, miserable lives of chickens while allowing us to pretend that we are responsible, compassionate consumers buying something we'd be better-off without.
i think its a good start. Why is everyone so negative. People aren't going to stop using animals for food, but at least they can do it in a better way. And it is a fad because if this was not something that looked good for companies in the eyes of society, they wouldn't be doing it. Its all marketing
No manure is the best option! I stopped eating eggs as soon as I heard that awful conditions that chickens have to endure...even on cage-free farms. As a result, my cholesterol plummeted.
While cage-free facilities are slightly less cruel, they still get their egg-layers from hatcheries, which suffocate or grind up their baby male chicks. 260 million baby male egg-type chicks are "disposed of" every year in the U.S. because they're not the kind of chicken that will grow large quickly.
egg-type chicks
What's an "egg-type chick"?
An "egg-type" or "layer" chick is the kind bred to lay eggs, as opposed to "broiler" chicks which are bred to be meat--though of course, layers are also slaughtered once they have served 1-2 years in production. Male layer chicks--who obviously don't lay eggs--are killed almost immediately after hatching. They're considered a "waste product" by the industry, and treated as such.