August | 2013 | donna waters: musings and other creatures

This is a story about trying to tell a story. It’s what happens when you start out with what you think is a great practical research idea, something that you are personally passionate about, you feel fortunate your supervisor gives you the go ahead, and you are reasonably confident it can be done within the required parameters and by the deadline.

Then – unbelievably – someone else has the same idea. But that someone else is the media and the consumer group Choice. Before you get a chance to put anything in print they publish their questions, concerns and findings. A lot.

So the story has to be abandoned or tweaked but in the end you decide it’s okay.

Because the point you wanted to make all along is out there.

ACT 1 The Beginning: setting up and setting off

If this journey followed a classic story structure, my character profile may read something like this:

Mature-aged emerging writer wants to combine her interests in food, ethics and writing to produce a blog about eggs and investigate the differences in their labeling. She is inspired by American documentary Food Inc. and journalist Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. She plans to combine thorough research, including the national industry guidelines, and visit the range of egg production systems first hand. She starts the journey at her local Coles supermarket.

It is true that both the documentary and Pollan’s book made me think more often about what I put in my mouth and where it came from. But my interest in food, in particular the ethics of food and its production has been simmering away for a long time. The rather benign question as to what I should eat triggers others:

Should I eat conventional or organic food?
Is it better for me to buy the traditional local tinned tomatoes or the organic imported ones?
Should I be interested in the distance my food has travelled?
Should I eat free range, organic or the cheaper, but still Australian, Aldi bulk chicken breast?
Should I be even eating meat at all?
What is the difference between all these labels anyway?

Really what I am wondering is what is the better thing to eat when faced with choice. First, I need to know what I mean by better and what really is the difference between the options available to me. So I begin with eggs.

Starting with me and my local Coles supermarket

Eggs at Coles down the road cost between $3.50 and $12.00 per dozen. I have been buying free range eggs for a long time and, like most free range consumers, I don’t mind spending a bit extra. That’s because I assume the hens who lay these eggs have a better life than their caged counterparts. I pictured outdoors, grass and space for these chickens and images of green pastures on some egg packages helped confirm this. I now know that the reality can be different and vary widely between producers. Some hens have no more than a square metre of space each where others live with a stocking density of around 1000 birds per hectare. This is more like one hen to ten square metres. Quite a difference when you think about the size of a square metre. It’s like comparing a backpacker’s somewhere in Asia with a McMansion.

Standing in my local Coles I flag a staff member and ask them where their company branded eggs come from. The packaging does not contain supplier, location or stocking density information. The staff member has no idea but suggests I ring head office.

In October 2012 Coles decided to stop selling company-branded caged eggs accounting for the freeing of 350,000 caged birds (Sarah Whyte tells us in her October 3 Sydney Morning Herald article). We can now buy ‘welfare-friendly’ eggs from Coles branded products.

Welfare-friendly eggs?

In late July I rang Coles and spoke to a politely assertive woman who was unable to give me the information I wanted. Coles do not give out supplier information due to a ‘confidentiality agreement’ and I was to refer to the website for any further queries. What kind of potential threat is there in knowing who suppliers your eggs? How does that warrant confidentiality agreements? I, also politely assertive, asked the Coles representative whether these eggs came from within the state as a conscientious consumer, I was interested in how far my food products travel. She again could not tell me this confidential information and insisted all the particulars that I needed were there on the website.

Coles cage-free eggs are labeled either barn laid or free range. According to their website, ‘barn laid and free range hens are free to roam around, perch and dirt bathe, all of which are natural behaviours’. Perhaps this is what is meant by ‘welfare-friendly’ eggs. They specify that the barn hens are ‘RSPCA’ approved and live in large sheds where they can exhibit their natural behaviours. The free range birds also live in similar conditions but have access to the outdoors. Apparently every free range bird has a square metre of space.

I think about the one square metre and am curious about the word ‘access’. It’s hard work to ensure my naturally objective nature keeps a creeping cynicism at bay. The cynicism I realise is not about animal welfare but more about marketing tactics. I recently read about some American free range egg production systems that boast the same things about access and natural behaviours. In reality these birds lived in huge barns with sliding doors that would be opened for about four to eight hours during the afternoon. These birds had ‘access’ to the great outdoors but rarely ventured out as they were either too traumatised or exhausted to be bothered.

Recently the other big supermarket player Woolworths, announced it too would phase out caged eggs by 2018 in response to growing consumer demand to address animal welfare. Battery hens lay about half of the eggs sold by the company. Sydney Morning Herald consumer affairs writer Sarah Whyte reports (October 4 2013) that this will affect twelve caged egg producers ‘who will have to shift to a more sustainable cage free model’ and that the subsequent rise in egg prices will be ‘expected but welcomed by animal rights groups and ethical consumers’. I like the idea that I am one of those ethical consumers supporting a sustainable cage free model – but what does it mean? What is a sustainable model and what makes me an ethical consumer by buying cage-free eggs?

Let’s just confirm what is meant by caged eggs

Images of tens of thousands of debeaked hens spending their short lives in tiny cages, tiered high in massive sheds has angered animal welfare groups and confronted many consumers. Egg package labeling has only been happening over the past five years, and in this time the demand for caged eggs has dropped from 75% of all eggs sold to the situation now where Coles and Woolworths will phase them out altogether.

Despite contacting the Australian Egg Corporation, and a number of caged egg producers (including the large Pace Farms in Sydney), no one was willing to let me visit their farms or even offer a telephone interview due to ‘strict biosecurity’ measures. This was not surprising. It is true that battery hens are more susceptible to diseases, and I am sure some of these producers were convinced I was an animal rights campaigner determined to expose their ‘shocking’ standards to the wider world.

Thinking about the notions of ‘better’ and ‘sustainable’ and ‘ethical’, the whole egg thing raised interesting philosophical dilemmas for me. Given where we sit in the food chain, most of us are using animals for their products. We exploit them for their eggs, or milk, or coat, and we often kill them. If I decide I am okay with this, should I be concerned about how they are cared for during the whole process? Well, yes I am concerned. I can’t help it. I loosely consider myself an animal ‘welfarist’ rather than an animal ‘rights’ person. Treating animals – whom I consider (controversially to many other people I imagine) as not having the same ‘rights’ as humans – humanely is important to me. Even if I am going to eat them in the end. Minimising suffering by providing a habitat and diet that is natural to them, and killing them in the quickest and least agonising way possible is essential. To me it means that as a whole we humans aren’t being intentionally cruel. And that’s without even considering the impact on the environment and ecosystems.

Caged eggs are produced from hens kept in tiny cages which they can share with three or four other birds. Often the cages are housed in huge sheds, stacked up to eight tiers high with wire floors so the hens are surrounded by their own and surrounding birds waste. Most are given antibiotics in their feed to prevent disease. The females have a life expectancy of about two years before their productivity declines, and debeaking is standard to ensure the hens don’t peck each other in such close proximity. Moulting – which typically results in increased egg production – is induced by restricting food and using artificial lighting for between two and four weeks. It is the most controlled egg production system and least natural habitat for hens who, left to their own devices, would be outdoors, bathe in the dust, nest and perch. Caged birds suffer higher rates of stress-related disease and illnesses but these eggs are the cheapest to produce, and therefore the most affordable for consumers.

(Image: Flickr Creative Commons FarmSource.org)

What about barn laid?

Interestingly the rate of stress and disease factors in many barn laid egg hens are similar to their caged friends. Rather than being enclosed in individual cages, these birds are tightly packed into barns, which can have multiple levels, with little room to move. There is no restriction on the use of antibiotics and growth promoting hormones, and beak trimming is permitted.The floors are concrete or wire mesh and the hens do not have access to natural sunlight. Angela Crocombe suggests in her 2008 book Ethical Eating, that the hens can be more vulnerable to attack from other birds as they are tightly packed yet don’t have the cages to protect them.

On the RSPCA website I found this information –

Approved Farming Scheme standards require that the hens in a barn-laid production system are provided with space for perching and litter for scratching and dust-bathing. All barns have nest boxes but not all barns have perches or litter (some barns have slats or wire-mesh flooring).

Farm Pride, a large egg supplier with farms in Victoria and New South Wales, picks and packs twelve million eggs a week. They label their barn laid eggs as ‘cage free’ and describe them as such –

The Farm Pride hens that have laid these cage free eggs have litter in which they can scratch and dust bathe. They have the freedom to flap their wings, stretch and socialise. The hens have perches and nests to lay their cage free eggs in and constant access to fresh water and feed. They are also safely protected from the elements and from predators.

Farm pride suggest that this method of production has a number of ‘welfare’ advantages for the birds. By keeping them indoors in large groups, the birds are ‘protected’, they can move around freely and enjoy social interaction. It also ‘allow hens a greater behavioural repertoire including nesting, perching and dust-bathing’.

Perhaps this is what is meant in the media and various websites by ‘welfare-friendly’ eggs. From my perspective, the enclosed nature of these farms and the widespread use of prophylactic antibiotics and beak trimming is still very far removed from what could be deemed a natural habitat. The bird stocking density of ‘no higher than 7-9 birds per square metre’ is not conducive to a minimally stressful environment. I chalked out a square metre on my lounge room floor and threw 7-9 stuffed toys in there. It is not a very big space at all.

Like the caged suppliers, no barn laid or cage-free egg producers were willing to be interviewed or let me visit their sites due to ‘biosecurity’ risks and organisational busyness.

(Image: Wikipedia Commons – cage free barn laid egg production)

ACT 2 The Middle: confrontations and set backs

Character profile for Act 2:

Woman finds herself in intense reading period. There are media reports almost every day about lack of clarity and transparency in egg labeling. Huge consumer group Choice gets on board and makes ‘super claim’ to Fair Trade Commission. She rings myriad of egg producers but nobody returns her calls. Including the Australian Egg Corporation. She is worried because:

She is not really a journalist and has no idea what to do now that other journalists are telling ‘her’ story
She swings between inspired action and paralysis;
She probably has perfectionist tendencies and is a natural worrier.

It is true to say that the Choice ‘super claim’ and news articles about the lack of egg labeling clarity and withdrawal of cage eggs from the two major supermarkets threw me. I have no idea why except to say that I did not want to be seen merely as rehashing the same questions and findings. But that is what I am doing and I realise it is necessary because to ignore the available information would be foolish. And I need to work through these questions to help me get to the point of where I started. Which is to clarify what is a ‘better’, more ‘ethical’ egg choice for me. And to see if I can even begin to understand what a ‘sustainable cage free’ model of egg production might look like.

Choice and the great free range debacle

If you consult the Coles website, free range eggs are laid by hens that live in a barn or shed but also have access to the outdoors. There’s that word again: access. They are required to have space to perch, roam around and dust bathe both inside the barn and outside. Coles’ free range birds each have a square metre of space to do these activities.

Going back to Farm Pride, their free range ‘hens have the freedom to move around outdoors during daylight hours, whilst their water, food and nests are housed inside sheds’. There is no indication on their website as to the shed’s stocking density.

The main issue with egg labeling – and it is particularly marked with the free range production method – is that there is no consistent definition and no legally enforceable conditions in Australia. Because standards vary so widely between free range suppliers, consumers cannot be confident in what exactly they are buying. The main variation between free range systems is the amount of space each bird has to roam, fossick and roost.

The free range labeling has become so vague that the consumer group Choice has made its second-ever ‘super complaint’ to the NSW Fair Trading Minister. They want the government to standardise labeling given, that as it currently stands, free range eggs could come from a farm that has hens at a stocking rate of between 1500 and 20,000 per square metre. Queensland is the only state that has legislated that free range egg production systems must have a maximum stocking density of 1500 birds per hectare. Choice also rightly argues that consumers are paying premium prices for free range products and yet often the standards of production differ so little to other cheaper options. Companies are selling us the ‘ideal idea’ of what free range eggs are.

What about organic and biodynamic eggs?

A carton of organic eggs could set you back anywhere between $6.00 and $13.00, two to four times more than other egg types. Certified organic eggs must come from farms that have a free range environment but with a maximum stocking density of 1500 birds per hectare. Additionally they must be fed grain that is at least 95% organic and not be given antibiotics, hormones or any artificial products at all.

ACT 3 The End: Resolution (of sorts)

Character profile for this act:

Egg people finally call woman back – and it is the smaller free range and organic producers that do. Three say yes to a phone interview and visit but only one actually allows her to come to their farm. Woman conducts phone interviews and farm visit and decides the eggs she brings home from the organic farm taste good.

Nixons Produce – Free Range eggs at Picton

John Nixon and I played a long game of phone tag before I was eventually able to talk with him. The business has been a family one since 1953 and John had been running it for ten years. When he first took it over the business produced all cage eggs but he gradually transitioned the farm to a free range production. Due to the rising costs of utilities, feed, petrol and labour, Nixon has recently bought another business further down the south coast. It meant that it was impossible for us to find a mutually suitable time to visit the farm in Picton. However it seems that his farm fits the standard picture of a free range production system. The four or five acre farms homes approximately 10,000 chickens. That’s a stocking density of around 5000 birds per hectare. Not the national model standard of 1500, but certainly not 20,000. His chickens live in a ‘big shed’ where they are not confined but can come and go as they like. His move to free range production was an awareness a decade ago that that was where business would be heading. He sells his eggs ‘wherever we can’ which is occasionally supermarkets, markets and cooperatives. When I ask him whether the decision by Coles and Woolworths to not stock caged eggs would affect his business, he was hopeful. He added that a local journalist had contacted him the previous day to ask him exactly the same question.

Clarendon Farm – Organic or Pastured Eggs Pitt Town

Thank you Ian Littleton from Clarendon Farms. He said yes and meant it.

I occasionally buy a fruit and vegetable box from the organic home delivery company Doorstep Organics which includes a $7.50 carton of 700g Clarendon Farm organic eggs. According to the packaging, not only do the Clarendon hens roam freely, there have been ‘no antibiotics, drugs, hormones, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic of chemical feed additives have been used in the production of these eggs’. After meeting and speaking with Ian Littleton I am very grateful to him for giving me his time in allowing me to visit, record our meeting and take photographs of his farm. He must be the only egg producer in Sydney who does allow site visits, conducts regular media interviews and organises tours of his production system for interested consumers.

After driving the two hours to Pitt Town on the northern edges of Sydney, I see first hand what I pictured free range egg farms (and what other free range suppliers would like us to envisage) would look like. Clarendon Farms is a sprawling green fifty acres, with a scattering of orange trees, mobile and fixed sheds. The few large paddocks are fenced off and I can see groups of red chickens actually roaming around. I am met at the fence by a couple of large white dogs who bark my arrival. Eight white Maremma sheepdogs act as flock guardians, protecting the 10,000 or so chickens from foxes and other predators.

Littleton tells me the stocking rate is very low at about 1000 birds per hectare and from what I can see there is plenty of room. The hens have access to a number of mobile laying houses that are regularly rotated around the farm to allow the pasture to be equally fertilised by their droppings and regularly rested before reseeding. The mobile homes have a few rows of nesting boxes, some perching arms that allow their waste to fall straight to the ground, are covered to allow shade but open to the air. Their organic Country Heritage feed is available in open troughs and Littleton assures me the birds are never confined – or debeaked. I ask him about ‘biosecurity’ as this term seems to have a symbiotic relationship with egg producers, and it also appears on his gate. Disease and stress-related illnesses are rare on Clarendon Farm, he tells me, and when a hen is sick, they are confined rather than given antibiotics. Between four and six thousand eggs are collected each day and are sold through a number of outlets including organic cooperatives and farmers’ markets. Before I leave I ask to buy a dozen eggs. I am given thirty.

I drive home with a burgeoning view of what might be a truly ‘sustainable cage free model’ of egg production. Farms like Clarendon, and a smaller version Buena Vista at Gerringong, are moving to be described as ‘pasture-raised’ egg producers rather than free range to move away from the fuzziness associated with the term. Pastured hens have more freedom than confinement and have the potential to live as close to a natural habitat as controlled farming can offer. The regular movement of mobile chook houses allows the hens to enjoy fresh grass and in turn avoids over grazing the pasture area left behind.

Buena Vista farm at Gerringong strives to be a small, sustainable and chemical-free farm that has, among other animals, around 400 laying hens. Their birds share their space with pigs and the farm practices regular rotational grazing. The pigs natural tendency to forage and dig turns over the soil, mixing the animal manure into the ground as it does. By moving the animals every few days the grass is able to absorb all of the fertiliser left by the animals. It is based on a model of sustainability that closely resembles the ecosystems observed in nature.

Clarendon Farm is a monoculture and therefore cannot completely meet this model. But the rotational practices, the freedom given to the birds and the virtual lack of stress related illness and disease is the closest thing I can see as fitting my idea of a ‘welfare friendly’ egg production. The birds are healthy, happy (as far as I can tell!) and not confined to a ruler sized space where they have no choice but to peck their neighbours feathers and bathe in their own and their neighbours manure rather than dust. I would rather not eat eggs from hens that were on regular antibiotics or hormones and debeaked. Farms like Clarendon and Buena Vista are examples of where the desire for food products and the desire for ethical treatment of these animals and habitats can work.

So for me the ‘better’ choice is to buy eggs that are either labeled organic in the supermarket or buy them direct from Clarendon Farms. It is better for me, the chickens that produce them and I am convinced, better for the larger ecosystem overall. Until governments can work out more transparent and compulsory egg labeling standards I don’t trust the free range labeling. If the rumour is true that egg producers will need to have stocking densities on their egg packaging, then that is a big step to allowing me – and other consumers – to make informed choices. What we eat and how it is produced has a profound ripple effect on the environment. Increased knowledge about the consequences of our choices can only be beneficial for ourselves, the animals used in food production and the environment that we rely all on.