drferox: If you’d asked me what sort of eggs I was buying when I was fresh out of vet school w
drferox: If you’d asked me what sort of eggs I was buying when I was fresh out of vet school with that shiny new degree, I would have said Barn Laid. This what because while Free Range hens, roaming the paddocks to socialize and peck bugs and grass might have been my ideal, the free range egg industry was poorly regulated at the time so your money might have been going towards farms keeping hens in basically the same conditions as Barn Laid anyway (because the barns they’re in at night are basically the same), but just opening one or two doors resulting in hens that don’t move more than 2m from the barn anyway, certainly don’t explore the paddock, and if only one or two doors are opened many hens wont venture outside at all. My point being not all Free Range eggs were equal. You couldn’t tell which ones were idyllic and which ones were a shed door opening to a quagmire. And this was a pretty significant criticism leveled against the egg industry. But check out these current Free Range Egg labels. ‘Free Range’ on its own means nothing, just that the hens can access the outside. But listing how many hens they have per hectare gives you an idea of just how crowded or not they are. Some even have chicken webcams so you can see for yourself. This sort of clearer labeling is welcome in helping people make more informed choices about what they’re eating. If you haven’t got a local neighborhood chicken appreciator, this sort of packaging helps you choose the next closest thing.You also see more grass-fed meat and free range meat options in the supermarkets these days, as well as whole sections on meat-alternatives, and I think having clearly labelled diversity in our food sources can only be a good thing. I live in hope that British labeling gets clearer too. Until then I’m going to continue being broke and buying the cheapest eggs available. -- source link
Tumblr Blog : drferox.tumblr.com