Legend tells of a 19th-century painter who made his pupils paint eggs — not fried or scrambled, but unbroken. The colour and texture of the shell, he believed, were reminiscent of human flesh.
Yes, eggs were a simple affair back then. In those days everybody knew that the eggs plopped out of beaked, feathered creatures that spent their days out and about in farmyards, if not meadows, pecking about for a healthy diet of seeds and grains.
Today eggs and their mothers are a more complicated affair.
The most frequently asked questions about eggs used to be: will they make my heart stop?
Well the Harvard School of Public Health followed the egg intake of 80 082 women and 37 850 men for eight years and found there was no relationship between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease in healthy adults consuming an average of one egg a day. The announcement had its critics, of course, and also it was found that for diabetic subjects, higher egg consumption was related to increased risk of coronary heart disease.
But that’s just cholesterol. People have wised up. They’ve modified their diets, taken their medication, pulled on awful leisure wear and got themselves down to the gym. They’re getting better at heart disease. The thing that concerns people about eggs these days is modern farming methods.
Here are today’s frequently asked questions, and answers.
What is a battery hen?
The method was first developed in the 1930s. Birds were kept indoors in individual cages and tended by hand. Today four or five birds share a small cage. The cages have only wire flooring and are stacked on top of each other. Light is artificial. Feeding is automated. Some battery systems contain as many as one million birds.
Most eggs on the market are battery-farmed, and are labelled according to colour and size, but the labels do not say the eggs are battery-produced — no detailed labelling is legally required.
At the age of about 74 weeks, battery hens are slaughtered. They are known as “spent hens” and their flesh is not considered fit for human consumption.
The use of battery cages for egg-laying hens has been banned by the European Union. It is to be outlawed by 2012.
Are eggs laid by hens kept in tiny battery cages less healthy than those laid by free-range hens?
There seems to be no definitive evidence to suggest that battery eggs are any less healthy than free range. Antibiotics are regularly fed to caged birds and some — although not all — free-range birds. In theory, free-range birds are not fed bits of other animals. In theory, they’re also hormone-free, but presumably not all free-range birds are so carefully raised, just as not all free-range birds get to wander in the meadows, finding their own nosh.
Chickens can be vegetarian and caged: for example the “corn fed” label means birds are fed a 100% vegetarian diet, but they may spend their short lives caged.
Perhaps the most gruesome fact about caged birds is that they often turn to cannibalism. Hens caged together fight to establish a pecking order — and as there is no escape, some are killed or badly injured. Because of their cramped conditions, dead birds are often not noticed, so surviving birds eat the rotting flesh.
Are free-range chickens happy?
Free range does not usually mean as-much-room-as-they-like. Birds have access to the outdoors, but are caged at night. People who do raise poultry in as-much-room-as-they-like type conditions produce eggs at a cost of about R1 an egg. Intensive free-range farmers produce at around 60c an egg. The chicken lover simply cannot compete commercially, although they do say that once people have tasted the happy eggs there’s no turning back.
What do the labels mean?
Different shops have different names for their eggs. Woolworths, for example, stocks four kinds. Free range: birds barned at night and fed a 100% vegetarian diet; free-range omega 3: free-range hens fed a diet rich in omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin E; free-range organic: laid by free range hens fed a 100% organic diet; grain fed: caged birds fed a 100% vegetarian diet. (Guess that’s apart from the ones that have reached the top of the pecking order and dined on the flesh of the vanquished.)
What are we doing about battery farming reform?
Nothing much, though South African egg producers have recently drawn up new regulations for egg production and clear definitions regarding free-range as opposed to battery production, because South African free range birds are often still subjected to cramped conditions at night.