Fu&*ing Organic Eggs!

[OtterDisgrace]

I've been purchasing organic eggs for years. Recently discovered that all egg farms, including all UK organic egg farms slaughter 40-70,000 male chicks alive each year. Some are gassed. They're simply surplus to requirements, such is mass production.
I would check if you buy from selective farms, too. Unfortunately I saw an image of little yellow male chicks being shunted along a conveyor belt into a grinder. Thankfully they didn't show you their fall.

I suppose I simply trusted the word organic. Personally I can't deal with that so I've quit egg products, although I am still a carnivore. It's worth being aware, just in case it matters to you.
My DP doesn't like it but still purchases free range. We can't expect other people to share our interests but I wish I had known much earlier on.

So organic chickens might have a fairly decent life and diet compared to free range, but the egg industry is taking the piss with its marketing.

It’s just a little strange that you have such strong feelings and opinions about something without even knowing what it means. No one’s being nasty. Just genuinely curious why you’re writing a furious post about what you seem to think is a massive farming industry secret, when it’s pretty common knowledge. Organic means they’re only allowed certain food and medications, it’s meant to benefit humans. Buying organic meat doesn’t mean the animals been treated any more fairly. It can actually have more downsides when animals are denied vaccinations or antibiotics when they’re sick, just so humans can have the ‘organic’ sticker on its carcass when it’s dead.

Well yes and no, avoiding something doesn't come at a financial cost does it? Say I choose not to fly or eat beef for environmental reasons, it's actually saving money as an aside to my moral decision not to do those things.

That's life. Life is a cycle, and it involves death. Humans have always been a part of that cycle, for as long as we have existed. Hunter-gatherers eat whatever they can get their hands on, from wild fruit and vegetables, to eggs taken from nests, to decently-sized insects, to animals that they snare or hunt or trap.

Peasant farmers kill wild animals that try to eat their crops, just as farmers still do now. In the UK, pigeon, rabbit and deer numbers are kept down by culling, or there would be nothing left for people to eat. The other year, on my godfather's farm, 5-10 pigeons were shot for every acre of arable crops.

It's only since we got all urban that we lost track of that reality.

There are five differences between organic and free range flocks: here

You do know that ‘free range’ has meant diddly squat during the avian flu outbreak?

We actually adhere to quite high animal welfare standards in this country. Believe we were one of the first countries to ban veal crates decades ago, long before our European neighbours did.

OP it's all a great education, I've been very aware for about 45 years but get that I'm an outlier in that respect, I spent a lot of years holding companies accountable. Writing to companies like Tesco who were advertising poultry with a picture of a happy chicken on a farm behind which is totally misleading. Get active with your campaigning! You'll feel less hopeless about the whole situation then x

Farmers are trying their best to keep their poultry in open barns as far as possible, not free range but a long way from battery farmed

There are different types of cow for beef and dairy.

The male chicks are often frozen into blocks of 200 and sold to Falconers for their birds of prey.

Circle of life.

regarding income levels - most people who are struggling shop differently to those who are not.
Chicken fucking nuggets from iceland are not high up on the welfare list, shipped in from Poland.

Honestly, if you can't see why income and education has an effect on this, you are living in the dark.

What has any of that got to do with organic eggs? Organic is just how the chickens were fed when they were alive.

Cattle have been selected for centuries to produce either meat or milk, and some breeds are good for both. If you know a bit about cattle, you can look at a field and know immediately if those are beef cattle or dairy cattle. There is just not much meat on a dairy cow. A lot of beef breeds have not been bred to be handled, either, and would not take kindly to being milked. Sometimes dairy cows are bred to produce beef x offspring, who are then reared for meat, but the serious beef breeds are ones like Aberdeen Angus or Charolais.

Same sort of thing with chickens: the commercially-viable breeds are either layers or meat chickens. Dual-purpose breeds do exist, but they are not commercially viable (the downward pressure on food prices sees to that).

And poor people are excused for their idiocy due to lack of tax funds to support equal education , and kids in care due to addict parents are surplus to requirements. Circle of life.

What?

What have kids in care got to do with this?

You’ve totally lost me there 😂

The eggs we eat aren’t ‘potentially male or female’ because they haven’t been fertilised (ie by a rooster). Even if they were incubated, nothing would happen as there is no zygote.

Hmmmm. Not going to enjoy my weetabix as much tomorrow.

It's possible to exclude all animal products cheaply in the immediate sense but it takes time and patience which is what a lot of people don't have the luxury of. The key is to make changes slowly and not put too much pressure of yourself.

Just worth pointing out that ALL food production results in the deaths of animals, from insects onwards. Rodents are controlled around barns, before the seed ever gets into the ground. God knows how many mice and voles are killed when the fields are tilled and sown. Warrens of rabbits are obliterated to stop them eating the crops. I know quite a few people who keep deer numbers down on local farms. As I said upthread, wood pigeons are shot over arable. Rabbits get drawn up into the machinery when potatoes are lifted. After harvest there is more control of rodents and birds lest they eat the harvested crop.

I've seen a whole swathe of oilseed rape in a field eaten down to the ground by rabbits. Seriously, if the deer, rabbits, rodents and pigeons were left to get on with it, there would be sod all left for us to eat.

....and eggs are eggs, not chicken nuggets.

Wherever you buy your eggs in the UK whether it's from Poundland or Waitrose, it's going to be from somewhere that kills male chicks by whatever method.

Whether it's free range or organic or higher welfare standards is a different kettle of fish to the original point.

We keep our own hens - 5 of them in our back garden (3 is enough, but we ended up with 5). They have a lovely life and when they are too old to lay, they enjoy their retirement with us too. This does not solve the problem of the disposal of male chicks, but we buy from a chicken breeder and they certainly don’t go through a grinder. We don’t eat meat if any kind.

Your compassionate concern is great, but I don’t understand how it sits with eating meat! What effect do you think the long cramped journeys by roads without water or rest breaks to abattoirs, following by hours (at least) waiting around in the midst of the smell of blood and death, does to the animals you choose to eat? Then there are the times they are not stunned properly before being killed. I’d say that stressing about the fate of male chicks to the point of refusing to eat eggs now, whilst being happy to still be “a carnivore (not accurate by the way, humans are not carnivore, we are omnivores so we can choose what we eat) is hypocritical.

I feed defrosted day-old chicks to my cats.

🤣 sorry, not making much sense am I!

Yea, totally agree about the eggs not being fertilised - what I was trying to say is that there is no sex-based selection for eggs (because there’s no sex, because they’re unfertilised).

It just struck me as odd that the OP was enraged about egg production but still willing to eat chicken.

@TeaAndCrumpets7 obviously I can’t speak for the OP but I think it was the completely inhumane methods of dispatching the day-old chicks that shocked her.

How are they slaughtered, do you know?

There’s a pet shop near us that sells them. I only know because every now and then for some reason there’ll be one lying on the street, it always shocks me. Yuck.

This!