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.

From the soil association website re organic farming and welfare standards - www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/why-organic/better-for-animals/#chickens

The guy who made the Supersize Me documentary years ago has a new documentary on the chicken industry, he goes through the motions of becoming a farmer and opening a chicken fast food place. It's eye opening to say the least.

This.

Lots of posts saying that organic means diddly squat relating to welfare - that isn’t true at all for the UK.
there are different organic standards though. A lot of the UK raised organic food is certified by the soil association - they have high welfare standards - when I looked at it years ago their standards in terms of required space per animal were the highest in the world (probably the same now, I just haven’t checked recently). Also treatment for sick animals is allowed in most organic systems (note: might be different in the US where a lot of the internet information comes from, lots of UK farming standards are different in the US). Its routine use of medications such as antibiotics for healthy animals that’s banned.

if you buy soil association certified organic eggs they have better minimum standards than free range - for example they must have minimum more space per chicken than free range.

Back to the OP.
I agree that raising chicks to destroy them is a disgrace and I don’t understand why more farms aren’t changing it.

You can raise roosters for meat, I’ve eaten it a lot as a small holding near us used to do this. But they are more aggressive than chickens to raise - we have raised roosters several times when incubating eggs for back garden chickens and although we tried to keep the roosters as long as possible, at about 8 months old they started fighting aggressively where you gave more than 2 - depends on the rooster but where you have a couple jostling for their position in the pecking order they will fight to serious injury and even death - we separated them but they’d try everything to get to each other and fight it out. This was where there was no space limitation for them to roam on so I’d imagine in a commercial farm where they are more crammed together it’s even worse. All that’s said, most commercial meat chickens only get to around 8 weeks old (and even high welfare systems it’s only around 12 weeks) so maybe they’d never get mature enough for this to be a particular problem.

I like Oatly too. You might need to try a few different types of oat milk to find one that makes your coffee the way you like it (I find some of them too ‘thin’). But it’s definitely possible! You get to know which brands you like and don’t like.

On your cornflakes you might find that everything’s not sweet enough at first. Keep trying and experimenting, I promise you you’ll get used to it and will come to prefer your new type of ‘milk’. I can’t stand real milk now as it tastes way too sweet to me.

Thank you! I will just make myself get used to it! I’m going to pop into Waitrose this week & get the whole Oatly one (although I’m sure it says it’s a drink!), I’ve been reading reviews & this seems like a good one.

Calves being taken away from their Mums is far worse than me having to get used to something different.

It's amazing how many people just think cows produce milk, they don't think about them needing to get pregnant and have a baby for that to happen.

My friend lives near a dairy farm and said the cries of the mother cows when they take their babies away are heartbreaking 😭

Oh god😢 I am the only one that has milk in our house so I can easily change.

I really do eat too much cheese though. I gave up meat but seem to have substituted it with cheese &i eggs. I buy organic eggs which is what brought me to this post☹️

Poor cows, makes me so sad. I admit to having not really giving it much thought which is awful.

If anyone does switch away from dairy products, just be aware that the substitutes are nothing like as nutritious.

And almonds, oats etc all have their own welfare costs. Oats are an arable crop, so, as I observed upthread, a lot of wildlife is going to be culled on the way to getting them to the factory.

That's exactly right. And It doesn't have to be 100% or nothing.

I'm sure they despatched those male chicks organically. It would be lovely to be able to have the option to produce female only offspring to continue being layers but until such time that it can be done, the males are completely surplus to requirements and mean that they would be kept alive for no gain. Eggs wouldn't be just expensive, they would be completely unaffordable. The same goes for chicken meat.

The care that these chickens had would dramatically decrease because there would be no money to raise them.

I do refuse to eat caged hen eggs when and where I can (sometimes they're used in products I'm unaware of) because battery farming is avoidable when free range exists. In an ideal world we would all raise our own happy chickens for eggs and meat but often people's ideals don't stretch far enough for more than complaining.

It is possible to sex and sort the eggs before they hatch, to avoid culling the male chicks, but the supermarkets don’t want us to know about that 🙄

https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/uk-supermarkets-ban-egg-industry-chick-culling/