to wonder if free range eggs are a big cruel con?

[evilcherub]

I normally buy free range eggs even though they are much more expensive than normal eggs but now I am wondering if they are a bit of a con, considering what can be classified as "free range". I have always wondered how free the birds really are and how easy it is to get a free range classification and it seems I have got an answer - (yes it is a Daily Mail article, but please don't let your prejudice get in the way of the point it is making);

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3489317/And-call-free-range-s-disturbing-images-16-000-free-range-hens-crammed-shed-fact-conditions-approved-RSPCA.html

CuttedPear - yes, I know that, I was just wondering if they taste different.

British hen welfare trust has a good article:

www.bhwt.org.uk/free-range-free-range-egg/

There is no strict definition of free range, but some hens have outside open space they can access.

I wasn't aware of this. So tesco free range eggs that I buy thinking I'm keeping the hens happy, aren't happy after all. What should I buy? I don't have local farm shops. Feel awful.

I've posted about this quite a lot.
For the majority of chickens in free range systems, they actually have less space than in cage systems.
My DC have never believed me when I've said this, but ds1 is now helping out a farmer and they visited a free range chicken farm last week. Outside the barn, there were a few chickens scratching around, looking like they had a lovely life. Inside the barn however, there were thousands of chickens crammed in.
Outside space is not accessible to all chickens. Stocking density takes into account any outside space, so the room each chicken has inside is actually less that they would have in a caged system, and the bullying is far, far worse as there is no limit to the numbers of chickens that can set on one at the bottom of the pecking order.

I buy Sainsbury's Basics eggs

This is a good article with some decent brands named (Clarence Court is one): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinkadvice/11411975/What-are-the-most-ethical-eggs-you-can-buy.html

Crumpetty, if you can stretch to it organic systems have higher welfare, not just lip service welfare standards that don't actually mean anything!

Can I ask about salmonella in farm eggs? I buy "free-range" supermarket eggs with the Lion stamp because I don't always cook the yolk to solid (for egg and soldiers). I'd much rather buy farm eggs (and have every opportunity to do so) but the lack of a Lion stamp concerns me. Or do farmers inoculate against salmonella too?

They're inoculated I think.

My 5 girlies love to potter around and scratch but they're in a secure pen early morning and early evening when more foxes are prowling around.

The eggs definitely taste wonderful and my husband can eat them without being ill. Since having chemo 3 years ago ordinary supermarket eggs make him physically sick with severe stomach cramps, although no idea why.

Nodney I really wouldn't place any importance on the Lion stamp if you can buy proper organic eggs. Much healthier IMO.

Genuine farm fresh free range are great you can always tell by the colour of the yolk and the taste but supermarket free range unfortunately are little better than battery or barn.

No hen has freedom when it is having its eggs taken for human consumption. I wish we could have a world where we didn't take advantage of animals the way we do. It is so much a part of the status quo (and the capitalist machine) that we rarely give it a second thought, but as soon as you start to think about the truth of the industry, it is pretty sobering.

Buy organic free range, but also I find the good companies really want you to know about it so their boxes are plastered with information about how much space they have, what they're fed, how they don't snip their beaks, have shrubbery and so on.

YANBU though. There should be stricter rules about the use of certain language in these situations.

We keep chickens and there is a big difference in taste/ colour of yolk. I struggle to eat eggs when away as they taste so bland even the free range ones.

Interestingly we only put out food and water for them in the barn but they roam, through choice),a good hundred metres or so (we're in the sticks)eating whatever they come across. They come sprinting back at dinner time. No foxes round here luckily!

So what's better ethically, those branded ones in the Indy article (Clarence court etc) or any organic?

CaoNiMao I think I have the chickens with the most freedom out of anyone I know. They do live in a barn and the gate is closed at night but it's jumpable for a chicken and they all roost along it in a row despite having a cosy hen house inside. They roam through the fields but they choose to come home for tea and choose to lay their eggs close by. I found twenty eggs sitting under an oak tree this morning. If I don't gather them they'll sit there eventually going off I really don't see the point in that?

Oh I'm glad Clarence court are ok, I love their eggs! So yellow!

I've not tried the blue ones but the Burford Brown ones are delicious.

You can taste the difference with Clarence Court can't you? As well as see it

CaoNiMao - hens have been bred to lay eggs. womaninatightspot's hens sound blissfully happy

The egg and dairy industry is cruel and vile. I won't get all preachy vegan on you (not that I'm entirely vegan), but honestly, just look into it. Free range doesn't make a whole lot of different.

Male chicks in are ground up whole and alive (beaks and all) as they are of no use to the farmers, even free range ones. If you're going to eat eggs, get chickens or get them from people locally that aren't mass produced.

If you really want to know the extent of it all, watch Earthlings, it's about the ethics of eating animal products.

Does anyone know how the male chicks are dealt with at small holdings/ roadside egg sellers? I don't buy eggs from the supermarket anymore and hope that buying them from smaller sellers means less cruelty?

In would give up eggs if the males are still killed by roadside sellers. It's a horribly cruel industry. Luckily live in a rural area where buying eggs from smallholdings is easy.

What FayaMAMA said, and those ground up chicks generally go straight back into the feed for the chickens.

Feeding the mums the ground up carcasses of their own infants so you can have a boiled egg.

All the male chicks are killed for the entire industry, 50 (ish) % of all chicks are going to be male, pretty much none are required, so it's into the grinder at a day old.

Wherever anyone is getting their chicks from it is still going on, they are surplus to requirements, they cannot be grown for meat as they are the wrong type of hen.

Though if I had the choice of a quick trip through the grinder at 1 day or a 16 week life of pain, suffering and disability ended by being hung upside down and having my throat slit I know which I would choose.

Ms mims- I kill my cockerels once mature and make coq au vin. I only have max 10 hens at a time though and only supply the eggs to my street so I'm not exactly a road side seller. My neighbors complained endlessly when my cocks where allowed to live. They still complain when it's only for a few weeks

A lot of the other small sellers here only buy point of lay hens so no cockerels to worry about - though of course, the poultry farm they buy from disposes of the males there- so really you're just buying from a link in the chain where the truth isn't visable. Still there though.

Like in all animals male and female chickens are born in pretty equal measures. There's no easy answer

I didn't think you could buy "non free range" eggs any more.