Right now, the US market has about 300 million laying hens, and only about eight percent of them are cage-free, according to this story in Wired.
In 2014, the US as a whole produced nearly 100 billion eggs, totaling
$10.2 billion in revenue. This kind of mass production depends on cages.
With those tiny wire boxes, farmers can micromanage everything about a
bird’s life. They can even help automate egg collection by forcing the
bird to lay its eggs directly into a funnel that drops down into a
collection area.
Today, eggs are widely available and cheap mostly because of caging systems.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
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2 comments:
Good article. Shows how trying to do better and better got so crazy, sort of my theme lately. Protecting chickens = good. Keeping them in cages so small they can't stand up for their whole life = bad. Where was the common sense?
I suspect they'll need a new breeding program to create poultry that isn't dependent on antibiotics. However, they are pretty vicious and can injure each other. I suppose that requires some selective breeding too. UK has about 45% cage free according to another article.
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