Supermarket Secrets

Watch this Channel 4 Dispatches documentary about the secrets behind British food and factory farms entitled Supermarket Secrets:

- Part 1, 49 min.
- Part 2, 49 min.

"How and what we eat has radically changed over the past few decades with the all-consuming rise of the supermarket. But what price are we paying for the homogenised, cheap and convenient food that supermarkets specialise in? In a two-part programme, journalist Jane Moore investigates how supermarkets have affected the food on our plates and reveals the tell-tale signs that the food we buy may not have been grown in the way we think."

Link:
Channel 4 Dispatches: Supermarket Secrets

Sunny Side Up?

I like my eggs with the sunny side up, please. Some people are more into scrambelled eggs, other people still are more of the over easy way, but like I said, I am a sunny side up kind of guy. So when I see a package of eggs from "The good egg people" I go get it. Rose Acre Farms is a family owned egg farm in the heartland of America. So these dudes are not only good egg people, they appear to be good egged Americans.

On their Golden Premium Eggs package Rose Acre Farms put the following relevant indicators:

Natural Eggs

United Egg Producers Certified, produced in compliance with United Egg Producers Animal Husbandry Guidelines

Natural Omega 3, Vitamin E

Cage Free Vegetarian Fed Hens

No Growth Hormones

Grains from Family Farms

A Good Source of Lutein

Egg packs are made out of 100% recycled PET-bottles and are 100% recycable

This all looked very animal friendly and healthy to me at first. Rose Acre Farms refer to the United Egg Producers (UEP) Certification, so here's where I looked for scrutiny. The Animal Husbandry Guidelines established by the UEP puts down a number of guidelines for the industry. So Acre Rose chickens have 67 to 86 inches of space per bird (at Acre Rose they are held cage free, but this does not increase the space per bird). In addition to this, I conclude from the beak trimming that was recommended by the UEP to prevent reciprocal agression by the hens that this space is still insufficient to ensure animal welfare.

The thinking of the UEP in general is heavily concerned with the efficiency and cost of egg production, so solutions toward animal stress and agression is found in beak trimming (reducing the effect of the birds' agression) and the breeding of a more docile bird, possibly by genetic selection or manipulation.

My advice is not to buy eggs that are only UEP certified, their certification is an over-easy and scrambled label and it's just not what I like.

Links:
- Rose Acre Farms
- UEP Certified
- Animal Husbandry Guidelines [.pdf]
- P.Y. Hester, Impact of Science and Management on the Welfare of Egg Laying Strains of Hens [.pdf]

GNN Agribusiness Video

Check out this Gorilla News Network on agribusiness.