Are Free-Range Eggs Ok To Eat?

You might have heard of the term "free-range" or “cage-free” being used to describe eggs, or found them labelled as such in your grocery store. The term implies that the eggs are sourced from chickens that are not confined to crates or boxes in factories but are supposedly “free” to roam around vast farms and grassy knolls.

It usually conjures up images of countryside idyll, happy chickens running about. But just because something is labelled free-range or cage-free doesn’t make it better – or right, for that matter. The entire concept of free-range poultry and meat is vague, at best.

“The very definition of grass-fed/organic/free-range animals is actually very loose and can vary wildly... It doesn't mean that the animals have any kind of quality of life necessarily; it just means the farm has to meet some arbitrary requirements to earn that title.”  

Vegan Sidekick  

A Free Ticket To The Slaughterhouse

Regardless of the nature of their lives before, farmed animals still get slaughtered – and that’s the focal point of the debate. There is a misconception that animals get to "live out their lives" before they are killed for meat and eggs. Animals are slaughtered as soon as their purpose is served, or as soon as they reach a profitable size or weight, which is at a fraction of their potential lifespan. They’re pretty much on death row.

What’s more is that ‘free-range’ does not hide the horrid reality – that in spite of the labels and jargon, farmers are still free to treat livestock exactly the way they want. Some actually do give their animals a fair standard of life before sending them to have their throats slit – but it's ignorant to think it's the norm in the first place.

The term cage-free doesn't ensure a happy life

The Dark Side Of Your Sunny-Side Up  

We all know that hens lay the eggs for your sunny side up each morning. What happens to the roosters? Whether free-range or factory farmed, male chicks are of no use for egg or meat production and are killed almost immediately after hatching. Actress and vegan activist Alicia Silverstone highlights the atrocities in her book The Kind Diet: 

“Other victims of the egg indutsry are male chicks; because egg operations need many more hens than roosters, baby male chicks are routinely disposed of in one or two ways: Either they are thrown into dumpsters full of other baby chicks, left to suffocate, or, they are put, live, through meat grinders to be fed to other livestock. Female chicks have their beaks ground off with a hot blade at 1 or 2 days old.”  

Alicia Silverstone, The Kind Diet

Is it time to rethink what's for breakfast?

An Unnatural Way To Live

Chickens are intelligent, inquisitive animals, but under farmed conditions, they are unable to perform any of their natural behaviours like dust-bathing or building a nest, feeding or foraging. The confined, packed-out conditions have serious implications for their physical and mental health – broken bones, osteoporosis and malignant tumours are common, as are stress-induced abnormal behaviours. Lack of exercise also causes some hens’ bodies to degenerate. And when their time's up, they are packed off to the same slaughterhouses as their caged counterparts - so is there really a difference?

“Chickens and other animals raised on organic or free-range farms are typically transported to the same terrifying slaughterhouses used by factory farms. Many animals are scalded to death or dismembered while they’re still conscious.”

Heather Moore, PETA foundation staffer

Eggs are a pantry mainstay the world over. There are entire cookbooks written around eggs – the wonder ingredient, the versatile kitchen staple that elevates everything from cake to pasta, the humble food item you can fall back on when there’s nothing left in your fridge. But is it worth the trauma? And do you really want to ingest that all that trauma and be an enabler in it all? When you do something as simple as replacing your scrambled eggs with a tofu scramble, you're saving this little guy's life.

The industry is brutal towards chicks

Think about it.   

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Read: What Is Animal Farming And How Does It Affect Us?

Read More: Why 30% Of The World's Land Is Used For Animal Agriculture