I haven't bought a non-free range egg in at least a decade, and I make sure any poultry I buy has been reared with good welfare.
1 - They might not actually be free-range after all. I've seen multiple exposes where the chickens advertised as "free-range" actually weren't, or they were allowed out of their cages for an hour a day and they called that "free-range".
2 - Even if they're are free-range, their conditions could still be appalling. Overcrowding and debeaking are common.
I'm in the UK, and we have proper regulation that sets out what "free range" is - it is not whatever ludicrously tenuous definition the US has dreamt up.
I live in rural Scotland, and can see free range chickens for myself - they seem to be living a good life.
The UK has some of the strictest animal welfare in the world, but they are still continuously broken by most farms across the country it seems. One example of many would be the private investigation into the suppliers for M&S's free range organic eggs in 2016. One of the most well reputed retailers in the country, yet they found barns full of ill chickens unable to walk, rotten corpses littering the place, and overcrowding throughout: https://investigations.peta.org/marks-spencer-cruelty-chicke...
All throughout my teens I worked on cattle and poultry farms across the South of England and to be frank, I saw disturbing scenes at every single one of them. Even though I've somewhat reconciled with eating animal products morally in recent years, I've lost any and all trust in the food production system to do it ethically, despite appearances on the surface.
If rigorous legislation doesn't stop farmers from abusing their livestock, then the only option left it seems is a return to self-reliant homesteading where you know exactly where the food comes from, or the production of synthetic alternatives as discussed in OP's article. Personally, as much as I enjoy the eggs from my rescue hens, I hope for the latter.
They probably have to if you want to keep the same, low and subsided price that people, who don't want or can pay more, got used to.
I'm aware that making a software-engineer salary I can easily afford more humanely raised eggs, but I'd never judge my friends who are, say, schoolteachers, for not being able to justify eggs that are 6x more expensive.
inb4 the inevitable comment of "pasture raised doesn't mean anything, the chickens can still...." Yes I researched the specific farm my eggs come from to make sure it's humane.
Humans are omnivores, we need to eat meat and animal proteins to live well, that's is, we can and we should treats animals we eat differently but that's not just a mere business issue, it's also a dimensional issue: we are many, too many. I doubt we can live without certain practice.
I do not say, of course, that TINA, we are in the sole possible world etc, just saying that going from an extreme to another is a good way to makes disasters.
Factory farm: living every day (and probably not very many of them) like you're in Saw or Cube or something. Far worse than even the pretty bad situation that is life in nature. Like, a lot worse. And that was already pretty bad.
Ethical farms, keeping backyard chickens, et c: Like living in a relatively good dystopia. Brave New World, maybe, in the best case. Logan's Run, in the worst.
It's because living in an network of intensive farms, named cities, detached from our natural environment, seeing the foods popping up regularly in certain place, already prepared, no need to hunt/source it, we thing that food arrive here by nature, that our intensive farm is actually nature?
Is that really different? Oh, yes we are not slaughtered at a certain point of our life, except in case of wars etc, but we are equally "used" for doing various jobs by some of us who think they are puppet-masters and we are the puppets (cfr. famous JP Morgan leaked phrase, various neoliberal books etc). Oh, yes, in our case the shepherd is not from another species (witch made things even worse), but we equally born in such intensive farms not free in nature.
It's just a matter about how much bad farming is bad, how much ethical farming is ethical.
Who’s asking to change other animals? It’s about humans changing their behavior. In nature, forced sex is very common among many animals. But in human societies we have deemed it a criminal activity. That’s just one example to show that humans, especially in our times, have improved ethics and the agency to commit to better ethics compared to our ancestors in the distant past.
https://youaretheirvoice.com/pages/the-clear-consensus
So you’re simply not correct that we need animals to thrive.
Oh, BTW just a bit more time ago most MDs agreed that radioactivity is good for health and they try to determine the best dosage of radium to be put on skin and eat for various purposes like fight baldness or fortifying the fetus in pregnant women. Years later most MDs agree that smoking tobacco is very good for many things, especially useful to fight flu and cold. Few years later we discover that that's was an Eduard Bernays advertising campaign: he created a medical journal that start publishing real studies and he distribute it between medical offices and universities, then he start injecting few false but false but credible studies that praised tobacco smoke. In little time many real researchers have follow claiming other discovering.
I can't really know for sure why there is a push against meat, what I know for sure is that's not a matter of fighting climate change, nor adapting to it. Another thing I know for sure is that ultra-processed foods, like foods based on insects and grains, cost very little for their producers on scale, and can be sold with a very big margin and are complex enough to make them taste good that no small player can compete. Meanwhile I know how sales of statins climbs in the recent years and who profit for them.
[1] witch is a common world and a completely true and false statement since LDL is digested thanks to all animal proteins and pushed up by starchy foods.
In an a bit far past (not that far) doctors recommend smoking as a cure-all for common winter disease, "it kills all the germs of the season", years after we discover that was just the result of an Eduard Bernays campaign for the American Tobacco Company: he create a new scientific journal, collecting real studies and sending it for free "to advertise the new journal", it became popular thanks to easy access and low entry barrier for publishing, then he inject some credible studies that prize smoking. MANY OTHERS researchers have followed them, taking them as true, and amplifying the echo.
Long story short, I have enough basic scientific knowledge to discern and to remember that Science is not based on blind trusting some "expert" but always demand why. Take meat for instance, common voices, dressed as scientific truth say that's bad for climate change because demand much water and produce much methane. Now try to see how much methane we estimate released into the atmosphere due to arctic heating and how much CO₂ is annually release by world fires. Clearly methane from cows does not change the climate. Now water: yes, livestock drink, clean water, and release urine, witch is not clean water. BUT it's still water. If treated to produce natural (ammonia-based) fertilizers we desperately need, the outcome is clean water, because we do not "consume" it, it's just a cycle. So again that statement is true if we just see a small part of the picture, false otherwise.
That's is, I have collect many examples of false beliefs considered established Science that aren't science at all. Of course I do know the ancient pro-smoking campaign was an advertisement campaign because that's history, we have documents, what's up today is "present" documents are not public, at least not much and not yet, but while we can't know "the real truth" we can still try to discern what's probably true from what's probably false, choosing not to trust any guru or formal association, privately founded just to note, but using actual Scientific method, demanding evidence, elaborating it.
If you want a chicken that can actually walk around and go outside you want a pasture raised egg.
I live in rural Scotland, and can see free range chickens for myself - they seem to be living a good life.
I use to think of it in numbers of a4 sheets of paper per hen. In a battery cage they have almost one. In fee range systems they have almost 3.
Not nearly enough for them to avoid stress behaviour and them killing eachother.
More often than not, better tasting food means it has higher nutritional value. This has been slightly butchered by modern food science when they started mixing chemicals to help sell industry waste as food... but for vast majority of foods that humans culturally ate before the food industry took over, good taste does mean higher nutritional value.
Not for nothing. It can be useful and pleasurable, but taste has a dark side as well. Having a sweet-tooth has been a stab in the back for many modern humans, as it leads to over-consumption of sugar, which can be horrible for one's health. More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.
Sugar is overvalued by taste buds because of its low availability when our taste buds evolved. This argument does not extend to every other taste.
>More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat
Meat is craved by the taste buds because it is the most nutrient dense natural food... with very few substitutes. All known surviving human cultures eat one of meat, fish or milk; no exceptions. Certain essential nutrients are not bioavailable to us without those.
>has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.
Animal "suffering" is completely arbitrary view based on shallow view of the ecosystem. Cells die all day but do you mourn their deaths? Zebras die all the time in the savannahs but do you think it is a good idea to capture all lions and feed them fake meat to "reduce animal suffering"? From the ecosystem point of view, individual organisms "suffering" is a part of a much bigger thing where it doesn't matter as much as an individual organism would think.
This exact same argument could be used to dismiss human suffering as well.
True. But we don't value human suffering above everything.
This is why all known human cultures have had some form of soldiers who are ready to die to protect the tribe, the religion, the culture, the nation or what not... otherwise they wouldn't exist.
Not just that, we allow for risky occupations like mining, fishing etc. i.e. things we need for sustenance. We even allow for risky hobbies or sports i.e. just for entertainment.
These are clearly more important than "human suffering".
You wouldn't choose to die to prolong the lives of the few cells in your infected tooth. You'd remove the tooth instead. Similarly, you'd sacrifice yourself to protect the tribe, family, country etc. And the ecosystem would try to sacrifice you to protect the ecosystem if it comes to that.
It’s not a function of having a certain view of ecosystems. It’s as a simple as accepting a few premises:
1. Needless suffering is generally bad 2. In almost all cases amongst those in the developed world, animal products aren’t generally necessary 3. farming animals causes their suffering.
This is why we love our dogs and don’t put them in dog fights. Or why we feel bad when we see someone putting kittens in a bag and throwing it in a river.
Animal fat in human food was mostly replaced by plant oils in the last 100 years by the food industry, causing increased deficiency in fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K in most of the world population. And that is just a few vitamins. There are other essential amino acids which are only available in animal products... and then there are others which nutrition science is still exploring... except nutrition science is ineffective and generally corrupted by the food industry so it takes a very long time to find out what is really true.
What can be believed though is by looking at the history. There are exactly ZERO tribes, cultures, ancient or modern which did not eat animal products.
>1. Needless suffering is generally bad
That has too many assumptions. What is "needless"? "Bad" for who/what purpose/goal?
For instance, one could argue that making humans suffer by depriving humans of essential nutrition for needless reasons like "animal suffering" is generally bad.
>3. farming animals causes their suffering.
Cooking bread causes suffering to the yeast colony. Yeast colonies are super-organisms (which are higher level organisms than individual yeast cells) and they definitely suffer (in their level of consciousness) when you put the dough in the oven... but if you were looking from a human perspective, you don't care about that. Similarly, from a potentially interplanetary species perspective, herbivores dying is not something we should relate to. You can choose to, but then you can also do that for yeast suffering.
First of all, this is wrong. Modern Jains avoid all animal products. Even if it weren't wrong, it isn't any sort of proof that it's required. So we ought not use that fact to justify our continued eating of animals.
> That has too many assumptions. What is "needless"? "Bad" for who/what purpose/goal?
Yeah, thats the tricky part, and you're right that there are situations where it can be difficult to determine if suffering is necessary or not, however those terms are defined. I think in general though people believe this. I reckon you do, too, which is why people tend to have averse reactions to hearing stories of folks imprisoned wrongfully, or people savagely beaten for nothing.
> Cooking bread causes suffering to the yeast colony. Yeast colonies are super-organisms (which are higher level organisms than individual yeast cells) and they definitely suffer (in their level of consciousness)
This is simply false. We have no reason to believe that yeast have any capacity to suffer, in the same way that people generally don't think broccoli can suffer. Sure, they die, but feel no pain and have no ability to understand anything, let alone their own experience.
This is just a version of the fallacy of nature.
I know. The developed world relies on food industry disinformation sold as "science". I believe this is the reason why the developed world has the kind of deficiencies and diseases that the indigenous cultures didn't have.
- Book: Food Politics by Marion Nestle
- Book: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
- YouTube Video: The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k (28 minutes)
Ah, yes, just ask the Romans, who liked to flavor their food with nutritious lead.
(The Romans' lead-based flavoring is an extreme example, but people have been eating pretty dubious things, particularly sugar, for a very long time because they taste good)