Ironically, you cannot choose how comfortable the human’s life is for most products.
If you put the eggs up your butt at the grocery store, you can choose how uncomfortable everyone will be.
In France the « bio » label (https://www.bioagricert.org/en/certification/organic-production/ab-france.html) does bot only take into account ecological properties of the product but also many metrics relative to the social quality of the company and well being of its employees.
There are certifications out there like FairTrade and others that try to make labor less slave-like in the world. Guess you could call that a way of making human life more comfortable
Okay but there actually is a pretty significant difference between eggs at the store vs buying them from someone who has chickens.
There was actually an egg shortage a while ago, but lots of people who were raising chickens couldn’t sell their eggs because, and I quote, “they were too rich in flavor and texture, so people didn’t like them”.
It was hilarious and sad that high quality eggs was just something no one ever tasted before, so they couldn’t suddenly get used to the flavor.
It’d be like if you drank skim milk your whole life only to find out regular “whole” milk is actually supposed to be creamy lol
This happened to me. My mother raises hens so when there were big egg shortages, we got some from her. The yolks were so rich that their color was practically orange and they would stain anything they got on. I’ve never had eggs so delicious and flavorful, plus anything I baked with them came out so rich and delicious. They really were almost overpowering and a little disconcerting to get used to. I’m amazed how bad even the best store bought eggs are now.
In the country they dine on fresh eggs from the hen-house, fresh tomatoes from the garden, fresh venison and foraged mushrooms. The food they eat is usually better tasting and better quality than the food billionaires eat.
I’m from the country and while your words are nice they’re not factual in the least.
do you think i could get a billionaire to buy me a lil cottage on their property where i could grow chickens and share them with him
I grew up in the country, while all of that did happen… it wasn’t like every meal was that. Eggs depended on how many eggs the dozen or so chickens laid recently, most chickens don’t lay industrial quantities… tomatoes only in mid/late summer when the garden is fruiting. deer only after deer season, even with my dad and I tagging out each year that isn’t enough deer for every meal to be deer meat (venison lol we don’t call it that). We mushroom hunted (foraging lol) every once in a while but again, wild pecker-heads aren’t prevalent enough for any population to eat regularly
100%. If you break a store egg and a farm egg next to each other, especially in the spring when the chickens start having access to insects again, the farm egg is almost cartoonishly orange next to the store egg.
I had a farmer I got eggs from for years and years. I was so lucky. 50 cents a dozen from 2003-2017. I eat a lot of eggs too. My family goes through two 30 packs a week.
He told me about a month before he stopped. “I done got old, can’t do it anymore. I keep falling and if I break my hip they might as well take me out back and give me a mercy bullet.”
I asked everyone under the sun. No one I found after that was consistent. I thought I found someone a few times, they disappeared after a few months. I gave up and started buying my eggs from the store.
All things must pass. Damn though, that one hurt to lose.
During my quest to find a new source for eggs though, I found someone with duck eggs. I figured, “Ahh, an egg is an egg, right?” Wrong. Duck eggs are not very tasty. They’re fine as an additive to a cake or something, but no way will I ever eat them again. Gah.
Duck eggs are delicious. Taste is often subjective.
Have you ever thought of raising your own chickens?
What’s really weird is that eggs are remarkably similar even when raised on entirely different diets or conditions. While farm raised eggs and organic or free range eggs are slightly better, the difference is much more minimal than I think most people think.
I went on a whole deep dive with that topic a while back and the result of that research was pretty much just that eggs themselves are pretty good for you but it matters a lot less which eggs you buy and more than you eat more of them.
All research points to your conclusion, and the downvoters and further comments don’t know shit. The feed affects the color almost entirely with extremely minor differences in everything else.
I highly recommend learning about chicken husbandry before you make this claim. There are decades of research across numerous countries talking about chicken feed and egg quality. Some farmers know by egg flavor alone if their chickens need supplements and which ones. Chickens can get really weird diseases if they aren’t taken care of properly and this absolutely affects their eggs. I think what you’re noticing is that the eggs you buy as a consumer are about the same for you personally, but that doesn’t mean you can then turn around and claim that “eggs are remarkably similar even when raised on entirely different diets or conditions” and be actually correct.
Wait, would that result in yellower chicken?
Joke aside, healthier chicken?
I don’t know, to be honest. I think they taste better, but I know it could be purely psychological… They’re my chickens, after all. I do think the shells are sturdier (not sure if it’s thickness or composition) when they have more bugs to eat. I don’t know about any claims regarding nutritional differences, but the eggs themselves do have some noticeable and measurable differences.
There’s a market down the street from me. They bring in Amish eggs every week and I always buy them there. The yolks are so bright and the eggs are delicious. Costs maybe 1.5x what regular eggs cost but they’re so worth it
Pretty cool that the price premium is only that! That’s more or less what you pay for regular free-range eggs, isn’t it?
I got this from a classic boomer dad of a girlfriend, about chicken meat. He said free range chicken was “more gamy” and he preferred uh…. Chickens raised in tiny cages who can’t move around, apparently. Ok psycho.
It’s what they eat that affects the eggs themselves, and what type of chicken. Plus we treat our eggs which is why they are such a salmonella risk and have to be refrigerated.
From what i understand just a diet more rich in beta carotene will produce a richer looking yolk. Seems like the chicken’s lifestyle would have other effects, too. And yeah, in the US eggs come throughly washed, which removes a layer on the outside that would otherwise keep them fresh at room temp. I think the salmonella thing is more related to the sanitary conditions of the farm - I.e. whether the chickens are infected with salmonella. Farms have cleaned up in that respect over the past couple decades and it’s much less prevalent than it was at one time.
Barnevelder
Eyy, that’s near my home town! Barneveld (the town) is basically Chicken/Egg central, as we have companies that build the machines that wash and package our eggs. We also have Haantje Pik which is a sticky cinnamon-bun-like pastry. It’s delicious!
That’s the thing, he had amazing powers of ignorance and apathy. Sure he’d prefer the most abusive methods of making foie gras too.
Just because it came out of someone’s back yard, doesn’t mean it’s high quality. So many chickens get table scraps and little else. Not everyone is suited to keeping pets, let alone livestock.
– But it generally does in developed countries as the majority of people going through the effort of keeping chickens in that environment are into keeping chickens. You might get some shitty setups, but the norm is decent quality feed and far less stress than large scale commercial setups.
It’s more of a hobby than a “get rich” scheme.
That’s cool, but neither of us have any data, and I’m telling you my experience has witnessed the norm is shitty setups feeding table scraps to half starved hens.
I told my American colleagues that in Denmark we get 3 consecutive weeks off during the summer, and the company is not allowed to contact us. We also get an additional 2 weeks off we can use whenever we want. Oh, and + 5 days (in hours). Again that we can use whenever.
Their jaws dropped.
Or the fact that we actually pay people to study (~1000 USD a month), instead of putting them into crippling lifelong debt.
If it’s like the system in Sweden, it’s actually ~$400 straight up benefit, and ~$800 in a very favourable (optional) loan with very low interest that is paid back over 25 years.
Meanwhile my boss’s boss was telling me last year that I had taken too much of our “unlimited” PTO after 2 weeks…
I get like 3 weeks off per year. Including holidays. Total. And that’s actually considered quite good in my market.
Not how comfortable their life is, how much you buy their industry’s marketing spin about the option for a chicken to stand in a pool of chicken shit, hormones and antibiotics or to be forcibly laying in it for the entirety of its life.
Eh, there’s also substandard:
- conventional - absolutely horrific - stuck in cage
- “cage free” - regular horrific - able to walk around, but they’re packed wall-to-wall
- “free range” - substandard - can go outside and walk around, but still usually overcrowded
The best option is to raise them yourself. But almost nobody does that, so I guess you pick how much you want to spend for the chicken to have a better life.
“Go outside” for free-range is also a tiny little pen that chickens don’t really know how to use.
There’s another option: Pasture-raised, certified humane. They have >100SF of outdoor space per bird, shelter, and eat a mix of insects and supplemental feed.
Aldi sells them for about 75% more than conventional eggs.
This is obviously something you saw on Reddit and didn’t bother fact checking.
If you buy from any producer of chicken, there is no such thing as cage free. All the chickens get transported to the slaughterhouse in cages. That being said, conventional chickens are not stuck in cages. Maybe some mom and pop shops do this? Not the major producers, the sheer amount of cages needed would be profit prohibitive. They’re raised in a chicken house but they are packed in side by side.
USDA defines free range as 2sqft per chicken. A chicken is give or take 30x smaller than a human so equivalent is if you grew up with a 60sqft personal bubble. Pasture raised is 108aqft per chicken, but the thing to remember is chickens are a family pack animal, so even if they have all the space in the world they won’t use it. They’ll stay near their home.
Chickens are essentially a brainless animal and their body can continue to function without a head. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
Also the species of chicken has a significant impact on quality of life and taste. I don’t know if there is any actual data but modern broilers cannot live long just due to their genetic breed. They’re a generic breed that grows super fast and has health issues as they age.
Chickens don’t live a great live in any production arena, but the worst is the transport and the slaughter which doesn’t change regardless of their free range designation. If it’s really something that bothers you, the only real solution is just to stop eating chicken products.
Eh, good thing factory chicken is a thing of the past in The Netherlands, it’s okay vs decent vs good.
Rondeel is decent: https://youtu.be/zwleQLKU-UI?si=kh7T6b_bV0HMXjzO
Label Rouge (France) is good: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aHlCEIAOpEk
Yeah sure it’s €4 to €5 per 10 eggs instead of €2.50 but there’s a big difference in quality. You get watery whites, tasteless yolks and paper thin shells with the cheapest eggs. Same for chickens, the Label Rouge ones are really small at 1.5 kg in comparison to faster growing ones.
hormones
As fucked as the poultry industry is, that’s not really a thing for a couple reasons. First is the FDA banned that practice, so in the USA at least you’re not going to find any poultry products where hormones or steroids are used – “hormone/steroid free!” is marketing BS stating they’re not doing something illegal.
Second: we’ve selectively bred chickens (broilers) that grow so freakishly fast and big you don’t need to give them hormones or steroids – their bodies naturally produce excessive amounts. These are chickens that need their food supply controlled because they will literally eat themselves to death if allowed to. They grow so large and quickly it’s common they develop leg issues leaving them immobile, and most will “naturally” start to die of heart attacks if they aren’t killed after 8 weeks.
Maybe in the US. Here you get what you pay for. You CAN get good eggs from “happy” chicken. They just cost a lot more. Like 5-10x. Only thing missing is like the name of the chicken that shat out your egg 😁
I suppose “here” isn’t the EU then. 😬 https://food.ec.europa.eu/animals/animal-welfare/eu-animal-welfare-legislation/animal-welfare-farm/laying-hens_en
It is the EU. And while it’s not perfect, it’s surely better than nothing. Also you’re not refering to organic food. And in there are also very very specific ones that are the best possible exploitation of life.
If people buy caged hen-eggs, then it will always stay. People don’t care. The majority at least.
We, personally, pet the hens more than the eggs we buy there.
Where I’m from, there was a huge egg shortage for a while because ~5 years ago the government passed new laws to try and make things marginally less horrible for chickens. The entire industry decided that they were going to do… basically nothing, then the rules came into force and there was lots of winging from industry people that 5 years want enough time, and how hard it was not being able to sell all this product that they kept producing for some reason
That wasn’t honest incompetence. That was a failed, organized attempt to force a repeal.
Sounds familiar, living in the Netherlands where farmers had years and subsidies to reduce reliance on livestock for the environment, then protested when the rules came into force and they hadn’t used the time or subsidies to prepare.
Similar thing happened with pork in California, ultimately we kept the new rule (which is nowhere near enough but its something) but only after enduring an entire year of whinging from the pork industry and astroturfed “news articles” about how expensive bacon was going to be.
Now it’s eight months since the rule came into effect and wouldn’t you know it the pork industry hasn’t collapsed.
