The Nonlinear Library EA - Lower-suffering egg brands available in the SF Bay Area by mayleaf
Jan 31, 2024
11:58
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Lower-suffering egg brands available in the SF Bay Area, published by mayleaf on January 31, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
(Disclaimer: I am not an animal welfare researcher or expert. I got all of my information from publicly-available certification standards, farm websites, and emailing individual farms.)
I'm not a vegan, but I've long felt troubled by the fact that eggs have such a high suffering-to-calorie ratio - higher, by some calculations, than beef[1] . I like eating eggs, and it seems possible to raise laying hens in a humane and low-suffering way, so I looked into whether I could purchase eggs from brands that treat their chickens well (or at least, less badly).
TL;DR: See here for egg brands I recommend that are sold in the Bay Area. If you're not based in the Bay Area, I recommend Cornucopia's Egg Scorecard tool and the Animal Welfare Approved store locator to find low-suffering eggs in your market area.
What does "lower-suffering" mean?
I don't know how to tell whether a hen's life is "overall happy" or "net-positive" (or if that's even a coherent way to think about this question). Instead, I looked into common industry practices that are harmful to laying hens, and tried to find brands that avoid those practices. To do this, I used the qualifying criteria for A Greener World's Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) certification, which I've personally heard animal welfare researchers speak highly of.
Unfortunately, very few egg brands (and none available in my current city) have an AWA certification, so rather than relying on certification status, I evaluated each brand on a per-criteria basis.
Based on the AWA standards for laying hens, my criteria included:
No physical mutilation. This includes debeaking (removing the whole beak), beak trimming (removing the sharp tip of the beak that the hen uses to forage and groom), toe-trimming (removing the hen's claws), etc. The AWA certification forbids all physical alterations.
No forced-molting. This involves starving hens for 1-2 weeks, which forces them into a molt (losing feathers), resetting their reproductive cycle so that they can restart egg production with higher yields. AWA forbids this.
Access to outdoor space and foraging. AWA mandates that outdoor foraging is accessible for at least 50% of daylight hours, and that housing is designed to encourage birds to forage outdoors during the day. The outdoor space must be an actual nice place to forage, with food and vegetation to provide cover from predators, and not just a dirt field. Indoor confinement is prohibited.
Age of outdoor access for pullets (young hens). Many farms keep pullets indoors for their safety even if adult hens forage outdoors. If you keep pullets indoors for too long, it seems that they became scared to go outside. AWA's standard is 4 weeks; many standard farms don't allow outdoor access until >12 weeks (if outdoor access is provided at all).
Indoor space. The hens' indoor housing or shelter must have at least 1.8 square feet per bird, unless they only return to their indoor housing to lay and sleep and spend the rest of the time outdoors.
Smaller flock size. AWA has no strict requirements here, but recommends a flock size of <500 birds, and notes that the birds must have a stable group size and be monitored to minimize fighting. This is much smaller than standard farms, which often have flock sizes of 10,000+ hens.
(The AWA certification has a ton more requirements than just this, but I limited my criteria to ones that I could easily check using online materials).
Is this enough?
I'm not sure. I've sometimes thought that avoiding industry-standard factory farms is like avoiding using prisons that violate the Geneva Convention: it prevents the worst atrocities, but by no means guarantees a good life. At other times, I read about the ...
(Disclaimer: I am not an animal welfare researcher or expert. I got all of my information from publicly-available certification standards, farm websites, and emailing individual farms.)
I'm not a vegan, but I've long felt troubled by the fact that eggs have such a high suffering-to-calorie ratio - higher, by some calculations, than beef[1] . I like eating eggs, and it seems possible to raise laying hens in a humane and low-suffering way, so I looked into whether I could purchase eggs from brands that treat their chickens well (or at least, less badly).
TL;DR: See here for egg brands I recommend that are sold in the Bay Area. If you're not based in the Bay Area, I recommend Cornucopia's Egg Scorecard tool and the Animal Welfare Approved store locator to find low-suffering eggs in your market area.
What does "lower-suffering" mean?
I don't know how to tell whether a hen's life is "overall happy" or "net-positive" (or if that's even a coherent way to think about this question). Instead, I looked into common industry practices that are harmful to laying hens, and tried to find brands that avoid those practices. To do this, I used the qualifying criteria for A Greener World's Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) certification, which I've personally heard animal welfare researchers speak highly of.
Unfortunately, very few egg brands (and none available in my current city) have an AWA certification, so rather than relying on certification status, I evaluated each brand on a per-criteria basis.
Based on the AWA standards for laying hens, my criteria included:
No physical mutilation. This includes debeaking (removing the whole beak), beak trimming (removing the sharp tip of the beak that the hen uses to forage and groom), toe-trimming (removing the hen's claws), etc. The AWA certification forbids all physical alterations.
No forced-molting. This involves starving hens for 1-2 weeks, which forces them into a molt (losing feathers), resetting their reproductive cycle so that they can restart egg production with higher yields. AWA forbids this.
Access to outdoor space and foraging. AWA mandates that outdoor foraging is accessible for at least 50% of daylight hours, and that housing is designed to encourage birds to forage outdoors during the day. The outdoor space must be an actual nice place to forage, with food and vegetation to provide cover from predators, and not just a dirt field. Indoor confinement is prohibited.
Age of outdoor access for pullets (young hens). Many farms keep pullets indoors for their safety even if adult hens forage outdoors. If you keep pullets indoors for too long, it seems that they became scared to go outside. AWA's standard is 4 weeks; many standard farms don't allow outdoor access until >12 weeks (if outdoor access is provided at all).
Indoor space. The hens' indoor housing or shelter must have at least 1.8 square feet per bird, unless they only return to their indoor housing to lay and sleep and spend the rest of the time outdoors.
Smaller flock size. AWA has no strict requirements here, but recommends a flock size of <500 birds, and notes that the birds must have a stable group size and be monitored to minimize fighting. This is much smaller than standard farms, which often have flock sizes of 10,000+ hens.
(The AWA certification has a ton more requirements than just this, but I limited my criteria to ones that I could easily check using online materials).
Is this enough?
I'm not sure. I've sometimes thought that avoiding industry-standard factory farms is like avoiding using prisons that violate the Geneva Convention: it prevents the worst atrocities, but by no means guarantees a good life. At other times, I read about the ...