There was a lot of pitiful grousing this week on social media about the law requiring commercial poultry farms keep hens cage-free in order to sell eggs in our state. The main argument went something like this: A scandalous abuse of government power is driving egg prices to shocking levels.
Shelves emptied as people tried desperately to beat the anticipated New Year hike as the law took full effect.
Online, people argued that there’s nothing wrong with cramming hens into small cages to keep prices a little cheaper. Cage-free is no poultry paradise anyway, folks said. This is just another way Governor Polis is trying to “destroy Colorado,” others mused.
For cluck’s sake. The logic here is so bad I can’t even use it as an example of rhetorical fallacies in class. Students will think I made it up while high.
First of all, animal welfare laws are hardly an abuse of government power. We the People have been enacting them since 1641. Today, federal and state laws set minimum standards for the treatment of livestock, pets, laboratory animals, and wildlife. These laws regulate how animals are kept, bred, licensed, exhibited, medically treated, hunted, slaughtered, packaged, sold, rendered, and otherwise disposed of in order to ensure humane treatment, mitigate environmental impacts, and safeguard human health and safety.
To understand why transitioning to cage-free is necessary, one need only witness the abject cruelty of battery cages. In these wire crates, hens are crammed together barely able to move much less engage in normal chicken behavior such as walking.
No one is equating cage-free with pasture-raised. Cage-free environments are indoor spaces where hens have limited room to move around, stretch their wings, perch, and lay down. Though not the idyllic life among the wildflowers, it is a big improvement over no room whatsoever. It’s like being among the crowd at a sold-out Red Rocks concert versus being locked in a gas station bathroom stall with two other adults for life.
Colorado is hardly an outlier in requiring hens to have living space. The European Union and 10 U.S. states have phased out battery cages. Large companies like Nestle, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Aramark, and General Mills have transitioned or are in the process of moving to cage-free eggs. Thanks to market pressure and the enactment of animal welfare laws, 70% of laying hens will be in cage-free environments by next year according to Associated Press estimates.
These changes have been phased in with the costs spread out over several years. The bump in current prices is mainly due to general inflation and a shortage of birds.
Thanks to a December outbreak of avian flu in Iowa, one of the nation’s top egg producing states, 6.7 million laying hens were culled and wholesale prices shot to $5.57 in the Midwest. Bird flu killed 35 million laying hens this year alone across the country. While a vaccine is in the works, avian flu will continue to drive up egg prices for the foreseeable future. Even so, eggs remain the cheapest form of animal protein. I paid roughly 38 cents apiece for the dozen and a half cage-free eggs I purchased two days ago.
Finally, if Polis is trying to destroy Colorado, as some Twitter users allege, the governor has failed spectacularly. The Legion of Doom, SPECTRE, Cobra, and the Umbrella Corporation — none of these organizations of evil — would accept him as a member and not just because of the turtleneck sweaters; Polis is a lame villain.
His critics try to give him credit for various dastardly deeds done by others but we know better. Polis didn’t introduce wolves; a slim majority of voters did that. He didn’t sue to keep Trump off the ballot, Republican and unaffiliated voters (including me) did that. And he didn’t raise humane standards for chickens, the legislature did that. Give credit where it’s due.
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