The Greens will shoot themselves in the foot if this goes through - nobody but the most hardcore animal rights nut is going to cough up $15 for a dozen eggs, so everybody will just start buying cage eggs instead. Another win for animal welfare.

It doesn't matter whether the chooks are free range or caged. They are nearly all fed on the same pellets anyway. Nutritionally, the commercial eggs are all the same. I can't understand why people allow themselves to be conned into paying $8 a dozen when they can get cage eggs for less than half of that.

David

This was a disturbingly slapdash argument, David. The current dispute concerns the accuracy of the 'free range' designation of egg production. Egg producers who feel threatened by growing community consciousness among the minority who are concerned about the cruelty frequently involved in commercial egg production will naturally seek to subvert the meaning of 'free range' production: that's the nature of competition. Your reliance on the fact that the general public might be happy to accept 20,000 birds per hectare as 'free range' production is quite irrelevant. The designation 'free range' is meant to inform the minority who are concerned to set standards that will mitigate or eliminate the cruelty involved in commercial egg production.

If it was so cruel, the chooks would go on strike and refuse to produce eggs. They are sentient beings you know.

David

Actually, Connelly, it IS all about perception - and little else.

Since, as you admit, this is merely "growing community consciousness among the minority" and since "free range" has no objective meaning, why would we allow that minority to impose its own definition on a concept that does not entail any such definition?

It is more likely to do with claims of free range. We do not have a legal definition, of what space a chook needs to be classed free range. Of course a chook would like no fences at all, but it is not practical whether it is layers or growers for meat, Chooks are farmed like any other animal or bird, so there has to be fences, it is a matter of space.