Free range vs. Barn eggs

Today, I ate two boiled eggs for lunch. One of them was free range, the other was a 'barn' egg. First, I'll explain what both these phrases mean:

Free range - In the EU, the hen that laid the egg must be allowed continuous access to the open air, and spends much of its time outside.

Barn - The hen has been contained indoors since hatching, and does not receive any 'natural' light. It is not caged, but shares the floor with hundreds of other hens.

Upon eating the two (unmarked) boiled eggs, I could not tell them apart by tasting them. Free range eggs are invariably more expensive than barn eggs, and from now on if I am given the choice I will choose barn eggs.

Are their any moral questions raised about buying barn eggs, or are hens generally considered to be morally unimportant?

Personally I would choose free range over deep litter (barn) eggs. It's cruel, no matter what animal it is, and I'd feel better knowing that the hen which laid the egg had a better life.

Although I do want a pet chicken so I wouldn't have to buy eggs

Personally speaking i like to buy free range. The conditions a barn hen is kept is much better than battery, however they do still s*** and piss on each other and barn hens still have hock burns. I happily eat meat and eggs when i know the conditions in which they are farmed are good. Part of this is an animal rights decision and part is simply the worry that an animal forced to sit in its own fecaes cannot be healthy.

Where I grew up was chicken country. Chickens raised in coops never knew the difference between night & day. The lights were kept on all night. Chickens will produce more eggs that way, but it shortens their life span. That's one reason free range eggs are more expensive. Fewer are produced.

The more I think about humane treatment of farm animals and free range vs. barn cs. battery hens, the more I think it's a complete hypocritical, conscience appeasing crock of s***.

Sorry, I know that's not a popular view.

But I mean, really - we give them as good a life as we can, right up until the point that we shoot them in the head and eat them/steal and boil their ovulations. Like we really care about them. If we really cared that much about them, we'd not shoot and eat them in the first place surely?

So assuming we can agree that it's fairly obvious that we don't care that much about them, what are the two reasons to treat animals well.

1. They taste better. Not very moral at all really, huh?
2. To appease the guilt we feel about eating them in the first place. "well, he had a good life up to the point that I shot him in the head, skinned him, carved the muscle from his bone, heated it to 160 degrees and ate him". We feel guilty, but not quite guilty enough it seems.

Personally I eat meat. I eat eggs. I eat fish. You know how I choose? I choose what has the best balance of flavor and price (oh, and I avoid things like growth hormones, which are actually banned in the EU after being shown to be really bad for humans). And I'm not ashamed to say so.

The reason we do not care about them (apart from caring about how "cruel" systems of use are) is that we grow up, socialised as speciesists. In law, nonhuman animals are regarded as things (and yet, corporations can be regarded as legal persons).

Animal welfare tells us not to cause "unnecessary suffering", and most people say they are in favour of animal welfarism. If we meant it, we would not eat meat or dairy since it is not necessary for us to live well.

This is why the animal rights baseline position on diet is veganism.

rogy

Precisely my point. A person says they spare animals the cruelty of a cage, and then wring their neck, pluck them, chop off their head, roast them and eat them. If one really cares, it might be nice to spare them the whole neck wringing thing too, which I'm guessing is slightly less pleasant than being in a cage.

Animal rights and animal welfare is, for most people, a trendy thing to support to make themselves feel good.

People who really care about farm animals don't eat them.

I don't care about farm animals.

For those who do care about "farm animals", there is a new animal rights movement that takes rights seriously (most "animal rights groups" like PeTA are progressive animal welfare organisations).

If you would like to see what a movement that takes rights seriously looks like, see: https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?page_id=52

rogy

There isn't anything wrong with discriminating on the grounds of species. Doing so on the grounds of skin colour or gender is immoral and illogical, since there are no relevant differences between people with different skin colours or genders with regards to moral treatment. On the other hand, the differences between certain species is entirely relevant. Hens, unlike humans, have no sophisticated social structure, and hence do not require powerful brains in order to process conscious thoughts and feelings. They are not self-aware, since they don't need to be in order to survive well. Therefore, they are incapable of suffering, since they do not experience conscious sensations of pain or emotion.

Apparently your first point there doesn't apply to eggs.

Free range i like to know my eggs have come from a chicken that's been treated well....i hope

Wow. We may have hoped that Cartesian views were a thing of the past. Your view of nonhuman experiences is remarkably dated. In relation to hens, for example:

Some poultry scientists and other poultry industry representatives say opposition to debeaking is based "more on emotion than research." In fact, debeaking was fully explored by the Brambell Committee, a group of veterinarians and other experts appointed by Parliament to investigate animal welfare concerns arising from intensive farming in the early 1960's. The committee wrote in 1965: "There is no physiological basis for the assertion that the operation is similar to the clipping of human finger nails. Between the horn and bone [of the beak] is a thin layer of highly sensitive soft tissue, resembling the quick of the human nail. The hot knife blade used in debeaking cuts through this complex horn, bone and sensitive tissue causing severe pain."

In 1990, in "Behavioral evidence for persistent pain following partial beak amputation in chickens," published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, Vol. 27, Michael Gentle and his associates at the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research, Edinburgh, Scotland, showed that experimentally debeaked chickens demonstrated chronic pain and suffering following the operation. Gentle explains: "The avian beak is a complex sensory organ which not only serves to grasp and manipulate food particles prior to ingestion, but is also used to manipulate non-food articles in nesting behavior and exploration, drinking, preening, and as a weapon in defensive and aggressive encounters. To enable the animal to perform this wide range of activities, the beak of the chicken has an extensive nerve supply with numerous mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors [ nerve endings sensitive to mechanical pressures, heat and pain]....Beak amputation results in extensive neuromas [tumors] being formed in the healed stump of the beak which give rise to abnormal spontaneous neural activity in the trigeminal [threefold] nerve. The nociceptors present in the beak of the chicken have similar properties to those found in mammalian skin and the neural activity arising from the trigeminal neuromas is similar to that reported in the rat, mouse, cat and the baboon. Therefore, in terms of the peripheral neural activity, partial beak amputation is likely to be a painful procedure leading not only to phantom and stump pain, but also to other characteristics of the hyperpathic syndrome, such as allodynia and hyperalgesia [the stress resulting from, and extreme sensitiveness to, painful stimuli]."

from: https://www.upc-online.org/merchandise/debeak_factsheet.html

rogy

1. I was merely presenting it as an argument that others present.
2. One data point proves nothing. There are many that report that free range eggs do taste better.

The battery confinement system is legal because nonhuman animals have the legal status of "things". Nonhuman animals are regarded as property, but property that is sentient, resulting in animal welfare legislations - in other words, the regulation of the use of animal property.

You should check out the abolitionist approach to animal rights: https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?page_id=52

rogy