Where do your eggs come from?
Many of us do our best to make good decisions at the supermarket. We choose organic produce over conventional, grass-fed meats when they're available, and organic dairy products. If we're able to, we're willing to pay a premium price for our food because we trust that the money is supporting sustainable agricultural practices.
Take organic eggs. When you buy a carton of organic eggs, you're expecting that the chickens that laid those eggs are fed organic diets and given free access to the outdoors. We know that chickens living in factory farms face squalid conditions confined to cages they can't even move around in. When we pay a premium for organic eggs, we are, in our own way, trying to buy a better life for the chickens that produce them.
But when the Cornucopia Institute did a wide-ranging investigation of organic egg producers, they found that may chickens were living in huge chicken houses with access to a very small, caged-in outdoor area. The amount of outside space was severely inadequate for the high number of birds packed into the chicken houses. What they found at many of these farms was nothing more than glorified factory farming, wrapped up to look prettier for the consumer.
