April 7, 2007 - Outside the cage

 

A small but growing number of egg producers is raising chickens the way it used to be done: outdoors with freedom to roam around, peck and preen

 

By Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun

 

Steve Easterbrook, owner of Rabbit River Farms, a company that contracts farmers to raise eggs from organically fed, free-range chickens, mentions as we look out at a flock of 1,000 such birds digging for worms and insects in an Abbotsford raspberry patch not far from the U.S. border, that this is how chickens were raised in 1946.

 

He knows this because he recently got his hands on a 1946 B.C. Ministry of Agriculture handbook on how to raise chickens properly, and it turns out that pretty much everything his contract farmer, George Klassen, is doing for his flock of 3,000 Lohman hens is what experts demanded chicken farmers throughout the province do for their birds in 1946.

 

That is to provide them with sufficient space outside to roam around, flap their wings, peck and preen, take impromptu dust baths, hunt for worms and, in the process, lay what works out to 8.5 to nine eggs every 10 days -- at least so says Klassen.

 

What's different is that today, 61 years later, what Klassen is doing is referred to as "specialty farming." His is one of only 22 beef, dairy, pork and chicken farms in the province -- and one of only 10 egg operations -- to be certified as humane by the B.C. SPCA.

 

By humane, the society means that animals are raised in such a way that they can express what are referred to in animal husbandry circles as the five freedoms.

 

They are:

• Freedom from thirst, hunger and malnutrition.
• Freedom from discomfort from their environment.
• Freedom from pain, injury and disease.
• Freedom to express normal behavior for the species.
• Freedom from fear and distress.

 

It's pretty basic stuff, but for most animals living on an industrial farm pretty much anywhere in Canada or the U.S., it's also an impossible dream.

 

But not for animals on an SPCA farm or one that's been certified by the Certified Organic Associations of B.C., whose standards are often even higher. (Klassen's farm has been certified by both.) For them, life is as close to Old McDonald as modern agricultural imperatives will allow.

 

Each year, Klassen pays $242 to the SPCA to have his farm inspected as a way of ensuring that it meets minimum standards as set down by the society's committee of farmers, animal welfare scientists and agriculture experts. And if he passes, Klassen's eggs, which are sold under Easterbrook's Rabbit River label, get to wear the SPCA's seal of approval -- a drawing of a little red farmhouse against a pale blue mountain, that now can be seen on grocery shelves in more than 100 B.C. stores, including Save-On Foods and the Great Canadian Superstore.

 

However, despite the program's success -- five years ago, only three farms were certified, and only a handful of retailers were willing to sell their wares -- only two per cent of all the eggs produced in B.C. and Canada are produced this way, says Bruce Passmore, farm animal welfare project coordinator for the Vancouver Humane Society. The rest are still laid by hens confined to battery cages so small they can't even stand up.

 

That's because battery cages are the cornerstones of a quasi-industrial process that has enabled producers to sell cheaper eggs to consumers -- up to 40 per cent cheaper than eggs produced on humane farms -- but one that New York Times food writer Michael Pollan describes in his 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma as the cruellest example of all agribusiness practices.

 

"The American laying hen spends her brief span of days piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage the floor of which four pages of this book could carpet wall to wall," Pollan writes. "Every natural instinct of this hen is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioural vices that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her breast against the wire mesh until it is completely bald and bleeding.

 

"Pain? Suffering? Madness? The operative suspension of disbelief depends on the acceptance of more neutral descriptors such as vices and stereotypes and stress. But whatever you want to call what goes on in those cages, the 10 per cent or so of hens that can't endure it and simply die is built into the cost of production."

 

The situation is no different on Canadian farms where there are no regulations on how chickens must be treated, only a voluntary, therefore unenforced, code of practice that recommends the use of battery cages.

 

But slowly -- or so Passmore hopes -- things are changing. Late last month influential celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced that his company, which manages a chain of high- and medium-price restaurants across the U.S., as well as a line of canned foods for U.S. and Canadian grocery shelves, would no longer buy eggs from caged hens.

 

At the same time, Guelph University became the first major educational institution in Canada to announce that all its food services would serve eggs from uncaged hens only. The University of B.C., Simon Fraser University, the B.C. Institute of Technology, McGill and Concordia Universities in Montreal and several other Canadian universities and colleges are working on similar policies, Passmore says, and the University of Toronto has a local sustainable food initiative that includes a cage-free egg component.

 

Richmond council is also considering a policy that would only allow eggs from free-range chickens in city facilities.

 

And a week later, fast-food giant Burger King announced that it, too, would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers who did not confine their hens and pigs in cages or crates.

 

"I think the whole area of social responsibility, social consciousness, is becoming much more important to the consumer," said Bob Goldin, executive vice-president of Technomic, a U.S. food industry research and consulting firm. "I think that the industry is going to see that it's an increasing imperative to get on that bandwagon."

 

It's a bandwagon that Klassen and his wife, Laura, inadvertently climbed on to 10 years ago when they started producing free-range eggs commercially. It was never a political statement with them, they say; it's just how they did things.

 

"This is what I'm comfortable with," Klassen says, looking out at his plump, outwardly contented, chestnut-brown birds scratching dirt around what once were rows of commercial raspberry vines. "To me, this is how you farm chickens."

 

But to interested consumers, producers like Easterbrook, and passionate animal-welfare campaigners -- people like Passmore whose VHS Chicken Out campaign is dedicated to this very thing -- it's practically a revolution.

 

"There's more coming down the pipeline," Passmore says of thePuck/ Guelph/Burger King announcements. "Just you wait."

 

The egg industry isn't objecting as long as Passmore's revolution makes money.

 

"In our business, if the consumers wants these kinds of definition [SPCA certified, certified organic, free-range, etc.], and it's important to the consumer, then we will support it," says B.C. Egg Marketing Board operations manager Peter Whitlock.

 

"Consumers have different interests of what's important to them, and different definitions of what they're concerned about. But whatever those differing concerns are, we'll have the product available based on what each of those people would like."

 

That's not quite the line the SPCA gets when it has discussed its farm-animal program with industry representatives, says program coordinator Alyssa Bell-Stoneman.

 

"They aren't pleased that we're doing it," she says, explaining that initially the program met with plenty of resistance from conventional farmers. "But," she adds, "I think they're starting to see, especially now that the marketplace is developing -- they see that this another option for people to choose in that marketplace."

 

The proof, she says, is in the steady interest in the SPCA program among farmers themselves.

 

"We had five new farms signed up last year, and we've interest from two more farms this year, and the year is only just beginning."

Tips for buying more humane eggs:

• Ask your grocer for "certified organic" eggs. They're the only eggs guaranteed to be free-range and they have the highest welfare standards.
• If you can't obtain certified organic eggs, look for cartons labelled "SPCA Certified" or "free-range" as they are cage-free and usually allow outdoor access.
• If you can't find certified organic, SPCA Certified or free-range, look for "free-run." They're from uncaged hens in large barns.
• When you check carton labelling remember that terms like "farm-fresh," "natural," or "omega-3" have nothing to do with animal welfare. The same goes for pictures of happy hens scratching the earth in the sunshine.
• For more information on eggs visit www.chickenout.ca

 

Source: Vancouver Humane Society