Lucky Chicken? Toward a Full Accounting of Egg Costs

Betty, Syd, Cindy and Wendy enjoying the good life.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the “good life” for chickens entails confinement in “enclosures roomy enough to stand up, lie down—even extend their wings fully without touching another bird.” That luxurious mobility corresponds to 116 square inches per bird, or about 0.8 of a square foot—the approximate area of a piece of legal paper. If that doesn’t sound luxurious, compare it to the industry standard for laying hens kept in battery cages—just 67 square inches. Those are the conditions in which 90% of the 280 million laying hens in this country are confined.

For people who have absorbed the common wisdom that chickens are dumb, dirty, or just plain mean, the plight of battery hens is no cause for concern.  Take, for example, the person identifying him- or herself as “Jay Rude,” who left this comment on the New York Times article mentioned above:

“It makes me laugh when I see all the comments about the ethical treatment of animals… These animals are a commodity, and meant to be eaten or produce a product… Chickens needing more space, what next, maybe we should complain about how much space corn seeds need and if they are crowded and how that makes them feel during their growing cycle.”

There’s a cruel logic here, but it conforms to the way we regard most of the things we buy and consume, from oil to iPhones. Commodities satisfy human wants and needs. We rely on them in our daily lives, but we rarely take the time to think about where they came from, or who made them—only their utility to us. When we buy a new T-shirt or a pair of jeans, our relationship is with the garment—so soft and warm! love the print!—not the workers who produced it. Especially given the physical and cultural distance these days between the people who make things and the places where those things are bought and sold, it can be even more challenging to, say, connect poor working conditions in garment factories in Asia to the clothes in our closet.

So studies showing that chickens exhibit signs of intelligence surpassing those of a human toddler, or that they “possesses communication skills on par with those of some primates” are as unlikely to provoke significant changes in consumer habits as the death of 1,100 garment workers in Bangladesh last year due to a factory collapse, or the news that the conditions leading to those workers’ deaths are persistent and widespread.

But what if, at least where food is concerned, the ends justify the means? What if the barbaric conditions to which laying hens are subjected are necessary to keep food costs low, and feed more people? Our friend Jay Rude expresses such sentiments in his comment:

“Quit trying to force more expensive food on the poor. As long as the commodity is not going to make the consumer sick, no one should care.”

This is a valid point, so long as you accept the underlying assumption that it is reasonable to consider something “food” so long as it doesn’t “make the consumer sick.” That’s a pretty low standard. And even if a battery egg doesn’t give you salmonella, it’s not clear that it won't have negative effects on your health in the longer run.

Nutritional studies conducted by Mother Earth News show that pasture-raised eggs routinely have one third less cholesterol, one quarter less saturated fat, two-thirds more vitamin A, two times more omega-3 fatty acids, three times more vitamin E, and seven times more beta carotene than eggs produced by cage-raised hens. That’s because pastured hens have access to grass, bugs, worms, and other food sources that are part of a nutritionally complete diet: Despite what you might infer from egg vendors touting a “vegetarian diet” for their hens, chickens are omnivores.

The problem is that even though nutrient-rich pasture eggs may be better for you, they have a higher up-front cost than battery eggs. A lifetime of eating eggs laid by pastured hens and other higher-quality foods might lower your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and myriad other health problems, but the costs of higher health-care bills, years of prescription medication—or at least vitamin supplements—and a shorter, lower-quality life are not easily quantifiable when you step up to the register at your local supermarket.

In that sense, keeping the cost of eggs low for consumers by offering a lower-quality product functions like a subsidy. But unlike the corporate welfare-style farm subsidies with which most of us are familiar, the cost isn’t paid directly, by the government—it’s paid by us, and for the most part indirectly. That doesn’t make the costs any less real, especially if our goal is to improve, not degrade, our health with the food we eat.