Insanity in the House of Representatives

In keeping with the apparent theme of insanity running wild in Congress the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the 2012 Farm Bill. Of particular interest to me is an amendment introduced by Congressman Steve King (R), Iowa. Known as the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act” (PICA), King is crowing its victory of inclusion in the final markup of the House Agriculture Committee’s Farm Bill.

Essentially, PICA “prohibits states from enacting laws that place onerous conditions on the means of production for agricultural goods that are sold within its own borders but are produced in other states”, says Kings website.

Specifically, King points to “free-range eggs” or “free-range pork” saying that “PICA will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and PETA are prohibited from establishing a patchwork of restrictive state laws aimed at slowly suffocating production agriculture out of existence.” According to meatingplace, King’s statement wasn’t as well crafted, saying the amendment will “shut down the Humane Society of the United States, PETA and other radical organizations from creating a network of restrictive state laws that will slowly push agriculture production towards the demise.”

Iowa’s egg farmers lead the nation in egg production, caring for nearly 60 million laying hens producing nearly 15 billion eggs per year. That’s almost one out of every five eggs produced in the United States, says the Iowa Egg Council (IEC). What isn’t said is that the great salmonella enteritidis outbreak in 2010 was linked to DeCoster Eggs, whose huge egg production operations in rural northern Iowa prompted the recall of 550 million eggs and sickened roughly 2,000 people. IEC also doesn’t tell you that a former manager in the network of companies owned by Jack DeCoster, plead guilty in 2012 for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a federal inspector to allow the sale of unapproved eggs.

California is at the crux of the issue when state legislation becomes effective in 2014 requiring only ‘free range’ eggs are sold. Voters in California and other states choose this. King argues that “the impact of their [CA] large market would compel producers in every other state to invest billions to meet the California standard” of production methods.

This has nothing to do with protecting interstate commerce. It has everything to do with protecting industrialized animal production and forcing its products on states that clearly don’t want them. Wouldn’t it be nice if all farmers could get a guarantee of business mandated by our government?

It appears that Congressman King is promoting farm animal practices which aren’t conscientious of animal welfare, public health, or food safety. King only knows that his state produces a lot of eggs which translate to big bucks!

What can one expect from a congressional member who rabidly defended “pink slime” in 2012? Using phrases and words such as “lean finely textured beef”, “enhancement”, and “supplement”, King went on an aggressive campaign pledging congressional hearings against those who conducted a “smear campaign” against pink slime.

Adding salt to the wound, other members of the House Agriculture Committee went along with Kings amendment.  INSANITY!

Note: All links accessed 05/17/2013

United Egg Producer Certified….. For Real?

Warning – Sit back in your chair and grab a beverage, this one is lengthy.

One would think that as many years as I have under my belt in industrial animal production that nothing would surprise me let alone faze me. In other words I’m somewhat jaded.

A friend sent me a link to a video clip on You Tube that left me shaking my head and asking “are you serious”. A slick campaign has been conjured up to convince the general public that The United Egg Producers (UEP) have the “premier animal welfare” for their laying hens with their very own seal of certification.

After watching, I set out to discover exactly what it meant to be UEP certified not realizing what a herculean task this would be or how confused I would become. Like most, I first searched the internet and found web addresses for uepcertified.com, unitedegg.com, and uepcertified.org. Having a suspicious mind when I find that there is a commercial web address (.com) and a non-profit web address (.org) for the same entity, red flags rise up, and it warrants further investigation. I found that all three are one and the same – promoting corporate ag and caged/non-caged egg production in confinement buildings.

Further confusion came when I read the UEP website, unitedegg.com, and I quote, “United Egg Producers (UEP) is a Capper-Volstead cooperative of egg farmers from all across the United States and representing the ownership of approximately 95% of all the nation’s egg-laying hens.” I didn’t realize that independent farmers were producing the majority of the eggs in this country I thought the eggs came from the vertically integrated system whereby a corporation owns everything except the mortgage on the farm they contract with and the manure their animals produce. I warrant that this needs further investigation, but that’s for another time!

Wading through all of the B.S., and I’m being polite here folks, I came out having to go back a second and third time to figure it all out. I printed out the freely available UEP Animal Husbandry Guidelines for U.S. Egg Laying Flocks which was found on both the .com and .org websites thinking that was the best place to start.

The 31 page document begins with a short history of egg laying chickens starting in the 1940’s and stimulates a not so wonderful picture of “small backyard flocks” producing the majority of eggs for our country at that time. It’s all in the wording folks that will lead you to think that industrial production and caged confined conditions that the corporate types now use are the best thing since sliced bread.

The first item that gave me a good chuckle is the claim that “the modern cage system has eliminated most diseases of the 1940’s, provided the hens with protection against the weather (environmental controlled housing) and predators, while also improving food safety, the environment (air and water), and animal welfare”. My perpetual habit of talking to myself left me wondering aloud “are these people for real”?

Most chicken diseases prevalent in the 1940’s have been eliminated, if not eradicated, due to development of vaccines, not cages. Secondly, “environmental controlled housing” is for the purpose of controlling every aspect of the chicken’s short life and wringing the most production out of the chickens. These people don’t give a hoot about protecting the hens the hens need to be protected from their way of thinking!

The insinuation that the modern cage system has improved food safety made me almost hysterical. Not so long ago a huge egg recall occurred because of salmonella and consumers becoming ill. The record speaks for itself. The companies involved are part of this confined housing caged system and UEP links to their website. I’d be willing to bet that the company is a member of UEP!

The claim of the modern caged system being an improvement for the environment “(air and water)” is more than hysterical. I had to stop reading and thinking for a while because I was simply flabbergasted. One of the talking points of federal legislation that UEP is promoting, H.R. 3798 that amends the Egg Products Inspection Act is – prohibition of “excessive ammonia levels in egg-laying henhouses”.

Highly acclaimed benefits of confined caged laying hens is that tens-of-thousands can be raised in a small amount of space (confinement building). Most often the building takes up less than one acre of land. Naturally, the hens excrete waste in the form of manure and an excessive amount of ammonia is produced. Where does everyone think that ammonia goes? For the benefit of those who don’t know – the excessive amounts of ammonia are released from the confinement houses into the air by way of huge exhaust fans. Not only is the ammonia released into the air, it comes back down onto the land and water as nitrogen making it available for excessive amounts of runoff into our waterways.

Secondly, how in the world does UEP think they are going to be able to stop the hens from excreting waste and producing ammonia inside of a confinement building, caged or not? If the theory of giving more space to the hens, which is included in the legislation I’ve mentioned, everyone better think again. This won’t reduce the number of hens inside buildings. Industry will only build the housing larger to accommodate the same number of hens, if not more.

The part about improving animal welfare gave me indigestion! No matter which way you spin it, a cage is a cage whether it is conventional, enriched, or cage free confinement buildings. The “enriched cage system” is the crux of the entire campaign and unbelievably “HSUS has embraced this which I wrote about in an earlier post. On the flip side evidently HSUS believes that this system will improve conditions for caged laying hens, making a trade-off that anything is better than nothing!

UEP’s Animal Husbandry Guidelines allow for beak trimming citing advantages that may include, and I underline the word “may”, reduced pecking, reduced feather pulling, reduced cannibalism, better feather condition, less fearfulness, less nervousness, less chronic stress, and decreased mortality. What this means is that beak trimming keeps the hens from picking on one another. If the hens weren’t bored to death being confined in a cage they wouldn’t peck on one another they would have other interests in pecking such as worms, bugs, grasses, or other items in the real natural environment.

The drawbacks of beak trimming cited by UEP guidelines are inability to feed, short term pain, perhaps chronic pain, and acute stress. Obviously and in the mind of UEP, these are all fair tradeoff’s in the welfare of the hens so that long term the hens don’t peck one another to death out of boredom from being caged. Never mind that inability to feed or chronic pain is at issue as well. I don’t suppose the thought that the entire method of raising confined caged hens is not in the best interest to the welfare of the animal.

UEP’s talking points for the proposed federal legislation says that it will provide egg laying hens with “nearly” double the space of current conventional cages and add “”enrichments”” such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas that will allow birds to express natural behaviors.” Sounds good when one looks at the words however the hens will still be in cages!

As I’ve evidenced in my great egg adventure, our hens express natural behaviors by running, jumping, flying, perching, flapping their wings at will, dust bathing and digging holes until they are almost covered, foraging for worms, bugs, and grasses and many other antics they decide to participate in. They also have nesting boxes and are able to run freely inside and outdoors. That my friend’s is expressing “natural behaviors”!

Furthermore, and according to UEP, “Today there are approximately 235 egg farmers with flocks of 75,000 hens or more. These farms care for about 95% of the approximately 290,000,000 laying hens in the United States.” How can there be only 235 farms raising 290,000,000 laying hens in this country? I found it impossible to find the number of acres utilized however I think the numbers above are self-explanatory.

I noticed in the many video clips available from UEP that the hen houses and cages are immaculate and promote thoughts of a sterile environment. Anyone who’s ever raised livestock or has been inside of a barn knows that animals naturally defecate however from what UEP is showing their hens must not do it. Quite frankly the inside of the confinement caged hen houses is cleaner than most human populated houses according to the pictures shown. Maybe we should all go and live in hen houses!

In my wanderings through related info and websites I found that UEP had a contact person from GolinHarris for further info about the legislation I’ve mentioned. My first thought was “what’s a GolinHarris”? I took a peek and found a piece of interesting info and decided to look no further because it was enough to figure out what a GolinHarris is -“For our clients, Communicate to Win is a driving force for building, sustaining and protecting corporate brands and reputations around the world.” Of course there’s a lot more words on the website, enough to make my head spin.

UEP is spending big bucks to drive through legislation that will define labeling allowances for eggs – Require labeling on all egg cartons to inform consumers of the methods used to produce the eggs, such as: “”eggs from caged hens,” “eggs from hens in enriched cages,” eggs from cage-free hens,” and “eggs from free range hens.” Aha! Eggs from hens in enriched cages…….. A little too obvious for me! Why anyone in their right mind would think that defining the type of cage or confinement makes it better for the hen’s welfare is beyond me. Doesn’t congress have better things to do than protect those who would mislead consumers into thinking that eggs from “enriched cages” are somehow better?

The Land of Confusion – Part II

Although I started out with explaining the confusion of a visitor to the farm over different farming methods, the saga of The Land of Confusion continues and expands after being bombarded with questions from readers. Before going forward I have to go back to my first post and explain to the many who’ve asked how I decided upon “The Land of Confusion”.

While I was writing the first post about animal confinement, fancy names for hen cages, and thinking about why these names are thought up, the song by Phil Collins (one of my favorites) Land of Confusion kept popping into my head. I have a tendency toward equating situations to music. It’s not something that I consciously do, it just happens. At times, it can be annoying, especially when I’m trying to concentrate.

I left off last time bringing into the conversation the term’s “free range” and “pasture raised” and how things can get really fuzzy. Again, I say it’s all about words and what kind of picture those words conjure up in the consumers mind.

Free range in my mind first conjures up the old song “Home on the Range”. What a lovely thought, right? Animals freely roaming the “range” with lots of lush grass to forage on – is NOT what it’s about. Free range varies greatly from farm to farm. Providing “access to the outdoors” is the key to free range. It could mean that the animals have huge pastures to forage in or it could mean that the animals have a small penned in area on dirt.

According to USDA, the term free range for poultry means that farmers must show that the “poultry has been allowed access to the outdoors”. What USDA doesn’t say is that the farmer must show that poultry actually went outdoors, for how long of a time period, or if grasses are readily available in the outdoor space.

In the beginning of the “free range” movement farmers who practiced this method intended for it to mean that their chickens were foraging outside on grasses and for the most part not confined. These were small scale farmers practicing a farming method which allowed for natural behaviors of chickens to abound. As the term caught on corporate agri-businesses saw opportunity in a market that was appealing to consumers. Legal minds went to work figuring how the phrase “free range” could be coined to suit the needs of industrial sized production and capture market share.

In my travels I’ve seen fenced in dirt lots running the length of an industrial sized chicken house that were considered “free range”. I found this method of farming to be appalling and although there is no legal definition for “free range” in my opinion the term has been adulterated. I don’t believe that this is the picture that consumers have in their minds when thinking about “free range”.

Enter the term “pasture raised”. When farmers saw what was happening to the original intents and purposes of the free range method of farming they saw the need to clarify. Farmers use this term to set their selves apart from “free range” and its meaning is the opposite as well. Chickens that are identified as “pasture raised” are outside on pasture and have access to shelter (indoors). To be more specific the chickens have continuous and unconfined access to pasture throughout their life.

To further complicate matters the “organic” seal of approval relates more to the diet of chickens than to how the chickens are raised. Again, the original intents and purposes of “organic” have become muddled whereby industrial agriculture has inserted itself into organic farming. Today there are several corporate giants that are synonymous with organic. The chickens only need “access” to the outside.

Another confusing type of phrase that is used to grab consumers describing laying hens and how they are raised – “cage free hens provided ample space and allowed to roam freely”. General thought would be that these chickens are not kept in cages and have lots of open space on the farm to roam at will. I’ve seen this type of wording used to define cage free hens raised in confinement buildings and never allowed outside. One might say that this is a misleading statement however there is nothing that says that the hens are outside roaming freely it just says that they are not caged and are allowed space to walk around. What it doesn’t say is that the space and freedom allowed is inside a confinement building or that the chickens aren’t allowed to forage. Technically this isn’t illegal.

As a farmer it’s hard to sift through all of the confusing language to figure out what method is right for the individual farm. Having now lived on both sides of the fence, so to speak, the choice was a no brainer. One could say that our farm took a drastic approach going from one side of the spectrum to the total opposite side of the spectrum.

Having become totally disgusted with industrial mass production of chickens and the methods used to adhere to the demands, from the farmer aspect and the animal aspect, changing to the complete opposite method was an easy transition. Knowing this doesn’t diminish the frustration when trying to explain different methods of farming to consumers and for their part, consumers are similarly frustrated in not having clear and concise language to understand what each claim or type of wording means.

A concise explanation about different claims of how chickens are raised and fed can be found here.
Not All Eggs Are Created Equal

Enter genetics. Most unknown to non-farmers is what type of animal is used for production. Maybe back in the 1920’s and 1930’s people were assured that a chicken was a chicken. What I call the “mix-master age of chickens” is today, a high stakes profit driven formula. For those who don’t know what a “mix-master” is, simply put, it’s a blender.

There’s a game that kids play called “mix em up, match em up” which is akin to the mix-master age of chickens. Genetics is an entirely different subject and we’ll talk about that in my next post about the land of confusion.

The Land of Confusion

I recently had a conversation with a visitor to the farm which made me think about how confusing different methods of farming can be for the average person. My visitor was clearly confused and after taking a hard look at the situation I could see why.

Since our conversation started out about our transition here on the farm from industrial confinement production of meat chickens to a pasture raised egg farm I’ll start with that.

Confinement operations in animal production are easily understood. The word “confinement” means exactly what it says. It is limited or restricted space of which one is unable to leave.

To put it into perspective, people are confined to places such as a jail. Most of us have heard some time in our life “go to your room”. That could be summed up as being restricted to the confines of ones bedroom as a method of punishment for bad behavior as a child.

In animal production confinement isn’t for the purpose of being punished for bad behavior. The main purpose is to have absolute control over the production of the animal whether it’s products such as milk or eggs or putting on pounds of meat, quickly. Confined production is basically designed for “efficiency”. Efficiency translates into profits.

In the case of meat chickens efficiency can be measured in restricting movement which would expend energy and in turn use more feed to put pounds of meat on the chicken. Saved feed reduces the cost of production which in turn raises profits.

Confining hens for egg laying is usually done by not only confining the chicken to a building but also confining the chicken to a cage. Sometimes the cages are stacked on top of one another. Life for the hens in cages is one which prohibits natural behaviors of chickens such as spreading of wings, dust bathing, and freedom of walking, running, or flying. Over 90 percent of all eggs produced in the US come from caged hens.

I’ve made my thoughts clear about caged hens in the past HSUS Takes a Dive Off of the Deep End! . The newest trend in industrial egg production is to put a fancy name on a cage. This is where the confusion comes in to play and it’s exactly what industrial agriculture corporate giants want.

Calling the new and better (not my choice of words) “enriched colony caging” for hens is supposed to conjure up a pretty picture in one’s mind. According to Merriam-Webster, “enrich” means to make rich or richer especially by the addition or increase of some desirable quality, attribute, or ingredient. If we were to take a look at this definition, proponents of caging hens could say that this is what has happened.

In reality, a cage is a cage no matter what fancy term is applied. Anyone who advocates for good husbandry practices or high welfare for farm animals should cringe. However that isn’t the case as we all know that HSUS has called it a landmark agreement between animal welfare advocates and the United Egg Producers (UEP). Thankfully, there are animal welfare advocates who haven’t caved in to industrial ag and HSUS should speak for its self.

Landmark agreements always come at a cost. No big deal, right! HSUS and UEP get to say that they did something great in compromising and this monumental move didn’t cost them anything. No indeed, it cost the hens!

Is it any wonder why the average person would be confused? It’s all about a play on words and what pictures those words present to the consumer. Before producing our own eggs I always looked for the word’s “cage free” when grocery shopping. That’s not to say that the hens are raised unconfined it just means that they aren’t also put into cages.

Recently, my friends at Flavor Magazine published an article about eggs. I suggest reading it to get a better idea of the mindset behind egg production and how the hens that produce the eggs should be raised depending on who is doing the talking.

Since we’ve gone to “pasture raised” another dilemma arises in the farming method confusion. My visitor was under the impression that “pasture raised” and “free range” are the same. Not so! This subject gets real fuzzy and will have to wait until my next post about the land of confusion.