UEP, which represents 87 percent of domestic egg production, and HSUS are jointly petitioning Congress to create national animal welfare standards for egg production, notably transitioning from battery cages to enriched housing systems, including perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas that provide laying hens almost double the amount of space than current systems.

The groups want to amend the Egg Products Inspection Act to mandate standards they agreed to in a landmark agreement in July. Eggs produced under conditions that don’t meet the new standards would not be allowed for sale in the U.S. under the new proposal, which would fully phase out battery cages by 2029.

Egg producers say they’re seeking the national standards in the face of a growing patchwork of varying state laws and regulations. Livestock groups are not pleased about the idea, which they fear will create a precedent for more federal regulations on livestock care.

In a letter to the House Agriculture Committee sent last week, eight leading livestock groups blasted the proposal, saying that it would impose “costly and unnecessary animal rights mandates,” according to a Feedstuffs report.

Livestock interest groups said that the uniform standards would ensure that “Congress will be in the egg business for years to come” and even called the proposal “an unconscionable federal overreach.” The groups argue the new standards’ $10 billion price tag would eliminate jobs and reduce consumer choice.

The letter was signed by the Egg Farmers of America, which represents a small fraction of the egg industry, the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union, American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Milk Producers Federation, National Pork Producers Council and National Turkey Federation, according to Feedstuffs.

United Egg Producers fired back Thursday with their own letters to both agriculture committees on Capitol Hill.

“Although we respect the right of the livestock groups to make their views known, the letter provides an overheated and distorted view of an initiative that is strongly supported by U.S. egg farmers,” said the letter.

In their rebuttal, UEP called the fear of setting a precedent for burdensome regulation as “hypothetical and baseless.”

“We hope Congress will realize that we are seeking legislation only for the egg industry,” continues the letter. “Both we and HSUS will oppose efforts to bring any other livestock or poultry species into the legislation.”

When the deal was announced in July, egg industry representatives said they would be closely monitoring and studying the humane standards’ impact on food safety.

“We have to make sure that we’re not giving up anything on the food safety front,” said a leading executive, who added that the industry would still be following the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Originally published on Food Safety News

We get it. Organic food typically costs more than conventional, that that’s a significant barrier for people under financial strain. Food activists are working toward big-picture, systems-wide changes that could make organic food more affordable, but in the meantime one company in New York State is trying to make organic food more affordable and accessible–one dozen eggs at a time.

Dean Sparks is already working hard to scale up the organic dairy and egg market in New York. His NYFoods company makes organic farming a viable options for farmers–and organic options more available for consumers. The eggs, cheese, butter, and milk sell in nearly 30 stores throughout the region and supplies all the milk and cream for Brooklyn’s adored Blue Marble Ice Cream. But after reading Start Something That Matters by Toms Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, Sparks wanted to do more.

If Mycoskie could give away a pair of shoes for every pair he sold, could NYFoods give away a dozen eggs for every dozen it sold?

Sparks is trying out this model at the Mott Haven Farmer’s Market in the South Bronx. Working in partnership with fresh food distributor Regional Access and local community organizers, NYFoods gives away a dozen eggs to every shopper at the market. This not only delivers free organic eggs to the community, it also provides an enticement for the community to shop at the market in the first place. It didn’t hurt that at the program’s launch on September 28 shoppers got samples of Blue Marble Ice Cream as well.

“Organic eggs from pastured hens are a healthy source of protein that’s so hard to find in many food-desert communities, even in New York City,” says Dean Sparks of NYFoods. “Free, certified organic pastured New York eggs from our small, family-owned farms in upstate New York are full of protein, vitamin E and omega 3 fatty acids. Any family in need can use them at home, regardless of their cooking skills or kitchen tools.”

How is this a viable business model for NYFoods? By making judicious use of what the hens produce. The company selects only extra-large eggs for the cartons sold for a premium at stores like Whole Foods. But those pastured hens are also laying smaller eggs–a bit too small for retail but still high-quality and nutrient-dense. The smaller eggs would otherwise be sold as egg whites, but NYFoods is distributing them for free.

The food news has been devastating lately with widespread contamination outbreaks emerging seemingly every day. Hearing about a food company working on positive change gives me a bit of hope for our food system. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see similar programs spread across the country?

The goal of The HSUS is not endless campaigning or conflict with political adversaries, but to find a place where we can forge solutions that produce tangible and meaningful outcomes for animals and show a new way forward in society. And that means sitting down with people who see the world differently than we do, even sitting down with industries that we’ve had deep disagreements with in the past.

Yesterday, we put that principle into practice. I participated in a press conference that I thought could only occur many years into the future: a joint event with The HSUS and the United Egg Producers (UEP).

The UEP is the primary trade association for the egg industry, and we’ve been at war with them over the extreme confinement practices in the industry—specifically, the confinement of laying hens in barren battery cages. We’ve supported bills in legislatures, ballot measures in the states, and litigation in the courts to make our case and to demand better living conditions for laying hens. With more than 260 million hens caught up in extreme confinement systems, we knew there was a lot at stake.

Yesterday, with the leaders of UEP at my side, I announced an agreement between the two organizations to mark the beginning of the end of the era of barren battery cages in America. The agreement, by calling for a national labeling program for all eggs sold in commerce, also promises to provide consumers with more information on the production practices used by egg farmers. This historic agreement calls for a series of reforms to be put into place in the years ahead that will demonstrably improve the lives of laying hens.

There’s currently no federal protection for chickens used for food at all, and no protection for any farm animals during production (there’s a federal humane slaughter law only, and even it applies only to mammals and not to birds). With this agreement, I have great hope that may soon change.

In short, the proposed legislation that HSUS and the UEP will work to enact would:

• require a moratorium at the end of 2011 on new construction of unenrichable battery cages—small, cramped, cages that nearly immobilize more than 90 percent of laying hens today—and the nationwide elimination of barren battery cages through a phase-out period;
• require phased-in construction of new hen housing systems that provide each hen nearly double the amount of space they’re currently provided;
• require environmental enrichments so birds can engage in important natural behaviors currently denied to them in barren cages, such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas;
• mandate labeling on all egg cartons nationwide to inform consumers of the method used to produce the eggs, such as “eggs from caged hens” or “eggs from cage-free hens”;
• prohibit forced molting through starvation—an inhumane practice that is inflicted on tens of millions of hens each year and which involves withholding all food from birds for up to two weeks in order to manipulate the laying cycle;
• prohibit excessive ammonia levels in henhouses—a common problem in the industry that is harmful to both hens and egg industry workers; and
• prohibit the sale of all eggs and egg products nationwide that don’t meet these requirements.

Some of the provisions will be implemented nearly immediately after enactment, such as those relating to molting, ammonia, and euthanasia, and others after just a few years, including labeling and the requirement that all birds will have to have at least 67 square inches of space each. (Currently, approximately 50 million laying hens are confined at only 48 square inches each.)

Right now people are a little fearful of eggs, and who can blame them? The recent salmonella outbreak that resulted in the recall of half-a-billion eggs and sickened more than a thousand people across the country has left people wondering just how safe our food supply is. As a nutritionist, people ask me about this a lot—and what’s most important to understand is that all eggs are not created equal. The industrial food industry has taken our foods and made many of them unsafe. Not only this, but the nutritional value of our foods is intricately tied into this same industry. Which leads to another question I often hear: What are the healthiest foods? This should be an easy question to answer, but with the industrial food complex wrecking havoc on our food supply, things have become far more complicated.

Eggs prove to be the perfect example, something that can be an extremely healthy food. I wish I could stop there, but the great variation in the quality of eggs makes this impossible. If we are talking about local, small-scale, farm-raised eggs from chickens that live on pasture and spend plenty of time outside, then yes, eggs are quite possibly the perfect food. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans don’t have access to eggs produced this way. On the other hand, if we are talking about the average egg that you pick up in a supermarket, then no, eggs are not very healthy at all. Not only are they unhealthy, but they can actually be unsafe to eat as this most recent recall illustrates.

So what makes industrially-produced eggs so different? Let’s start with the safety issues. Eggs that come from hens confined to battery hen houses are not produced in sanitary conditions. Tens of thousands of cramped chickens spend their short lives either lined up in tiny cages or crowded into open henhouses, standing in their own feces, unable to move around or gain access to fresh air or sunlight. They are stressed and often sick.

Since the late 1980s, salmonella has been a major problem in these giant warehouses. One giant producer in particular, Austin DeCoster of Wright County Egg, has been responsible for multiple outbreaks of salmonella over the years, according to yesterday’s New York Times article. State regulators were so concerned, that for a period of time, New York and Maryland even banned the sale of DeCoster eggs. Salmonella can be quite serious to those with a weakened immune system, babies, young children, the elderly, and pregnant women. According to the Times article, in one of the earlier DeCoster egg outbreaks, nine people died. Salmonella has also been linked to a host of chronic ailments, including reactive arthritis, Reiter’s syndrome, Miller-Fisher syndrome, and ulcers.

When it comes to nutrition, it is not widely known or understood that the industrial egg is significantly less healthful than the egg from a pasture-raised chicken. The industry has managed to take real foods, like eggs, and make them not only unsafe, but also less nutritious. Mother Earth News completed a study in 2007 that compared the nutritional profiles of industrial eggs versus eggs from pasture-raised chickens and found substantial nutritional differences. According to the study, eggs from pasture-raised chickens contained two-thirds more vitamin A, three to six times more vitamin D, two times more omega-3 fatty acids, three times more vitamin E, and seven times more beta-carotene than their industrial counterparts.

Why? Industrial eggs are fed processed grains (usually genetically modified corn that is heavily sprayed with pesticides). This is not the chicken’s natural diet. Chickens are omnivores and will eat grass, seeds, insects, grubs and whatever else they find while roaming on pasture. This varied diet results in a more nutrient-dense egg, which is higher in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A and beta-carotene. In addition, chickens that live outdoors convert sunlight into vitamin D and other nutrients that store in their eggs.

Something else I often hear is: But don’t eggs raise cholesterol? The answer is no. People are often shocked by this since the government, dieticians, and doctors have spent years telling people to eat fewer eggs or to eat egg whites alone. But this is a fallacy, as studies have consistently shown that dietary cholesterol is not what influences blood cholesterol levels. In fact, findings from a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that people who ate four eggs per week had significantly lower mean serum cholesterol levels than those who ate one egg per week. Plus, the daily nutrient intake of people who ate eggs was much higher than the non-egg eaters. And you won’t get these benefits from the egg white alone. The egg exists as a whole for a reason, the nutrients in the yolk and the white work in concert to make the egg the perfect food. I would recommend eating at least one high quality egg a day and for children and pregnant women, two or more.

The challenge is making pasture-raised chickens and their eggs available to everyone. Sometimes access and availability are the issue and sometimes it’s cost. Pastured eggs are much more expensive than industrial eggs and this is something that must change. But consider that you are getting more nutritional bang for your buck when you eat pastured eggs. Plus, coming down with a bout of salmonella as a result of a factory farm’s irresponsibility and carelessness is something no one deserves.

Visit your local farmer’s market to find pastured eggs and ask the farmer about his or her practices. To find pastured producers near you go to Eat Wild or Local Harvest.

This is the first piece in a regular column by holistic nutrition expert, Kristin Wartman. She will examine food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

Photo: Tina Negus on Flickr

Picture this: three long-haired college kids are unloading crates of food from the bed of a battered pick-up truck. It’s parked curbside at the Androscoggin Food Co-op located in the equally battered mill town of Lewiston, Maine. The year is 1971 and these kids are, unbeknownst to them, the vanguard of the local food movement.

They’ve spent the day rounding up goods directly from local farms and food processors, not because they’re devout locavores (the word wouldn’t be invented for another 35 years) but because sourcing locally was the cheapest way to get food for a co-op whose members were largely lower income. Some crates are full of apples from a nearby orchard; others contain 12-pound wheels of a so-so cheddar from a small cheese plant; and one cardboard box contains 30 dozen eggs from a chicken farm only 10 miles down the road. That box is labeled DeCoster Farms.

Yes, the product of this family egg farm (now headquartered in Iowa) at the eye of the current salmonella storm was being handled contentedly by these prehistoric foodies, I among them. As a company that was started with 125 hens in the mid-1960s by Austin “Jack” DeCoster in the farm town of Turner (pronounced “Turna” by everybody except out-of-state college kids), it was as local as you could get.

Funny how times change. Jack, now 71, was an ambitious man who wasn’t going to be happy selling locally produced eggs just in northern New England. According to one DeCoster employee, Jack is a born-again Christian who doesn’t engage in any leisure pursuits other than work, which he apparently pursues 18-hours a day. With a work ethic like that, growth was inevitable. Now operating under the names of Wright County Egg and Quality Egg, Jack’s egg empire now produces 2.3 million dozen eggs a week in Iowa while his “starter” farm back in Turner, renamed Maine Contract Farming, keeps 3.5 million hens gainfully employed.

But Jack paid a steep price for getting big and going global. Though town folks in Maine and Iowa love the jobs, huge property tax payments, and Jack’s “community mindedness” (new playgrounds and all the free eggs you can eat at local fundraising breakfasts), they are less than sanguine about the factory farms’ legacy of pollution, labor abuse, and animal cruelty. In 1994 the State of Iowa fined DeCoster for environmental pollution and designated the business a “habitual violator.” Back in Maine DeCoster paid a $2 million fine in 1997 to the U.S. Department of Labor for egregious health and safety violations that led to then Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich describing the farm’s working conditions “as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop.” The federal Equal Opportunity Commission settled a $1.5 million sexual harassment suit brought against one of DeCoster’s Iowa operations in 2002. And again in Turner, as recently as June of this year, the State of Maine fined Maine Contract Farming $125,000 for animal cruelty. And now dirty eggs – 380 million of them are Jack’s – have been recalled following 1500 reported cases of salmonella poisoning (another Iowa producer, Hillandale Farms, not a DeCoster operation, was forced to recall 170 million eggs).

Had Jack developed some leisure activities earlier in life he might have become a relatively successful Androscoggin homey. But holding his personality traits aside, remaining a small egg business was probably not an option. Like other agricultural operations, “get big or get out” has been the driving reality. This has led to the egg industry’s consolidation with fewer but larger producers now controlling most of the egg supply in this country. That means, of course, massive egg-laying factories that often hold as many as 150,000 hens in a single warehouse, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, and the production of Himalayan mountains of chicken manure.

For those of us who take refuge from the industrial food system by purchasing oddly sized and colored eggs packaged in a mish-mash assortment of cartons at a farmers’ market, or who are willing to pay $4 a dozen for certified organic eggs at Whole Foods, we have to be reminded from time to time that we are the exception. According to the New York Times, out of every 100 eggs produced in the US, 97 come from hens that are kept in tightly packed battery cages, 2 come from hens that are “cage-free” but always kept indoors, and just 1 from a “free-range” source where chickens can spend some time outdoors.

If the Jacks of the world rule, whether we’re talking eggs or eggplant, then how do we avoid the mischief that our industrial food system is heir to? Better government regulation and monitoring are the answers on the lips of many policy makers and consumer advocates these days. While there is always room to improve government efficiency – ending the divide between USDA and FDA food safety oversight is one obvious choice – I’m not confident that government can protect the consumer in an age of industrial agriculture. Our faith in science, technology, and regulatory oversight can be as misplaced as our trust in mega food and farm corporations. With tremendous resources at their disposal, our industrial food players are more than able to game the system. And in what could be the ultimate irony, the biggest violators often have the deepest pockets which positions them nicely to comply, at least on paper, with ever increasing (and costly) regulatory requirements. The little guy – the small farmer, the ones who are local and whom we know and genuinely trust – could be put out of business if a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation is implemented.

Perhaps there is another fear as well, one that we feel in our hearts more than our heads, but is nevertheless suitable for the 21st century. As the industrial food system becomes ever more dominant and government feels the need to escalate its authority, don’t we run the risk of sacrificing ever greater measures of our freedom and independence? Could the days of an all-powerful national Food Czar be far off? Holding aside the anti-government nonsense of the Tea Party, it is now possible to imagine food production being so remote and so beyond our understanding that we have no choice but to place all control and authority in the hands of a few food corporations and a board of government overseers.

A healthy antidote to this distinct set of possibilities, both in terms of food system control and human health, might come in the form of direct engagement by citizen-consumers in their food supply. For instance, there is ample room to educate ourselves about safe food handling, particularly if local school boards recognize the importance of (and fund) food education. The individual, after all, is the last and probably best line of defense against salmonella and other food-borne bacteria.

What about raising our own chickens? The backyard poultry movement may be even bigger these days than the Tea Party, and certainly more useful. A dozen hens can provide all the eggs that several neighborhood families could eat in a week and provide a lot of education and fun (a leisure pursuit, Jack?) along the way.

And what about food democracy? Food policy councils now exist in over 100 cities and states and are beginning to shape the direction of their local food systems. To support the backyard poultry movement, for instance, councils in places like Cleveland, Chicago, and Missoula have passed chicken ordinances which make it legal, easy, and safe to raise a few hens on city lots and in backyards.

Clean hands on sanitized cutting boards, building our own chicken coops, and bringing our voices loud and clear to city hall offer us a distinctly brighter set of possibilities than the prospect of ponderous bureaucracies locked in mortal combat with resistant food corporations. And who knows, maybe today’s clean-cut crop of college students could organize and stock the next wave of co-ops with authentically local food. The good old days may be coming back, but this time they could be even better.

Photo: Phae

A reader recently asked me if I could expand the post I did last year on “choosing the right milk” to include eggs, another food for which there a lot of confusing buying options. Although there are more details below, the short answer is that you should look for eggs that are “pasture-raised” from a farm near you. Pasture-raised is pretty much what it sounds like — they are eggs laid by hens that are raised with open access to pasture where they can scratch, peck, bask in the sun, eat and run around to their hearts content.

Unfortunately, “organic”, “cage-free”, and “free-range” classifications/certifications do not guarantee that the birds are fed a natural diet or that they live the life of a normal chicken, complete with keeping their beaks (egg-laying hens raised in factory farms routinely have their beaks cut off–a truly horrible practice that is done to prevent them from hurting each other in their extremely close living quarters), having enough room not just to turn around but also to run around in, as well as unlimited access to the real outdoors and all the sunlight, yummy grass, and nutritious bugs they desire.

For example, the USDA defines “free-range” as meaning “allowed access to the outdoors.” Unfortunately, for many “free-range” birds, this merely means that the factory farm leaves a tiny hatch on its shed open to a bare external concrete yard for a certain number of minutes each day, an “opportunity” the chickens have likely never even learned to take advantage of.

“Organic” certification refers solely to the certification of the birds’ feed and while it is certainly marginally better to buy factory-farm organic eggs than not, organic feed does not a healthy, happy chicken (or egg) make.

In addition to the fact that pasture-raised animals have lives worth living (which cannot be said of most birds raised on factory farms, even the ones that sell “cage-free” eggs), there are a lot of benefits to us, the egg eaters, as well.

Although the results vary slightly for each batch of eggs tested (since pasture-raised chickens’ diets do vary by farm and by season, unlike factory-raised birds that eat the same thing all year round), the benefits are clear: pasture-raised eggs contain significantly less cholesterol and saturated fats and significantly more Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, and Beta Carotene than their factory-farmed counterparts. If you’re interested in the research, check out the results of this Mother Earth News study as well as the additional studies listed in the Mounting Evidence section at the bottom of page 4.

The other criteria, buying eggs that are raised locally, is important for three reasons:

1. the eggs you receive will be fresher and more nutritious for you and your family,
2. you will be supporting your local farmers and your local economy, and
3. the carbon footprint of your egg-consumption will be lower since they only have to be transported a short distance to reach you.

We buy delicious, pasture-raised eggs straight from our CSA, Eatwell Farm. The eggs from their chickens (see the photo of “the girls”, as Eatwell calls them, right) have rich golden yolks that “stand up” — one sure sign of a fresh, nutritious egg.

If you can’t find pasture-raised eggs at your local farmers’ market, these sites can help you locate a good local source: Local Harvest, Eat Wild, and Eat Well Guide (if you know of a farm near you that sells pasture-raised eggs, encourage them to submit their listing to these sites as they’re always trying to build their databases.)

You can also raise your own eggs! This is as fresh and as local as it gets. Raising backyard chicken appears to be a quickly-growing trend. In addition to the chickens that belong to my back neighbors, Fran and Chip, and the flock at the Edible Schoolyard two blocks from our house, I know of at least three other small flocks of chickens being raised right here in my little North Berkeley neighborhood. If you’re interested in this idea, stay tuned as I will be doing a post on backyard chickens soon.

If you really can’t find pasture-raised, local eggs for some reason (they’re easier and easier to find), I would recommend buying an organic, free-range option from a more trusted brand, such as Organic Valley or Clover (see my milk post for a review of different organic brands) since they purchase from a network of smaller farms, increasing the chance that the birds are treated more humanely. Also look for a brand that is “Humane-certified”.

Originally published at The Garden of Eating

First off, a full kettle on the top of the stove equals an instant hot beverage at any time of the day. My morning now just requires reaching for a mug and selecting a tea bag, and the rest is already done (that is, if a certain someone has been up early and stoked the fire before I rise). The kettle also acts as a room humidifier, battling the dryness of winter. Other water based cooking may take a little bit more time and a little advance planning, but a pot on the stove will eventually boil and lead to any number of results, from hard boiled eggs, to pasta, to oatmeal. And reheating is a breeze.

But there are some dishes that seem to improve from the slower heating and fire infusion. The recipe below is an example, where flavors fused and the texture actually improved from the gradual heat. The next chapter to take on will be baking projects, perhaps using the variety of cast iron pots and pans I have inherited from my grandparents. I’m envisioning crusty sourdough loaves in the heavy covered Dutch oven or puffy pancake souffles. Steamed puddings, roasted meats, caramelized vegetables, stews; there are a zillion possibilities and a long wet winter ahead to try them all.

Fireplace Eggs

2 organic fresh eggs
Homemade marinara sauce
Grated mozzarella cheese (optional)
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper

First, make sure you have a strong, roaring fire. In a small skillet, heat about ¼ cup of olive oil on top of the stove. Crack the eggs into the pan and cook until whites are solid (or until your desired level of jiggly or unjiggly-ness is achieved). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour about ½ cup of marinara around eggs and cover with grated cheese if using. Cover pan until melted and hot. Meanwhile, place a chunk or two of crusty bread on top of stove. Eat eggs, sopping up sauce with the hot bread.

Note: Although similar, this technique is obviously different from the one Alice Waters employs in her open home hearth, seen now in a variety of publications including lunch for Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes and a recent visit by NY Times columnist Maira Kalman. Not many of us are lucky enough to have an expansive kitchen fire pit here in the States, but open fire cooking indoors is still widely practiced around the world and is the precursor to our modern day fireplaces and wood stoves. My aim is to reclaim that energy source as a useful tool, and illustrate how easy it can be to eat from your heat.

Unlike many other major restaurant chains—including Denny’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Quiznos, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and Red Robin—every single egg IHOP uses comes from a hen confined in a cage so small, she can’t even spread her wings. That’s right: 100% of the eggs IHOP sources come from battery cage confinement operations. Even more, IHOP’s primary egg supplier, Michael Foods, was just exposed by an undercover investigation that documented particularly egregious acts of animal cruelty.

In IHOP’s home state of California, this extreme form of confinement is considered so cruel that it’s been criminalized, and the Golden State’s egg producers must now phase it out.

And with good reason. The science is clear that battery cage confinement systems—those from which 100% of IHOP’s eggs come—are inherently inhumane. For example, the prestigious Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production—an independent panel chaired by former Kansas Governor John Carlin that also included former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, animal scientists, veterinarians, and ranchers—studied the issue for 2.5 years and concluded that battery cages must be phased out.

There’s more. The most thorough analysis of laying hen welfare ever done concluded that barren battery cages simply cannot provide adequate welfare. A comprehensive review of the scientific literature comparing cages and cage-free systems concluded that moving away from battery cages would improve hen welfare. And a Netherlands Journal of Agriculture Science report ranked battery cages dead last in terms of animal welfare.

But instead of starting to switch to higher welfare cage-free systems, IHOP merely offers excuses, such as, “Our supplier standards go beyond what is required by law…” It’s easy for IHOP to state that it goes beyond what’s required by law, as nearly no laws protect animals while they’re on factory farms.

Food industry consulting firm Technomic published a 2007 survey that found animal welfare is the third-most important social issue to American restaurant-goers—ever more important than the environment. A 2007 American Farm Bureau Federation survey found that less than a third of Americans think battery cages are humane, and nearly 90 percent believe food companies that require farmers to treat animals better are doing the right thing.

The time has indeed come for IHOP to do the right thing. Ask the company to get started.

But one thing the egg industry likely won’t trot out in its PR effort is its sordid animal welfare record.

Arguably the most abused animals in all of U.S. agribusiness, nearly 280 million egg-laying hens live in barren, wire battery cages so restrictive they can’t even spread their wings. Each bird has less space than a sheet of letter-sized paper on which to live for eighteen months before she’s slaughtered. The birds can’t nest, dust bathe, perch, or walk—they endure lives wrought with suffering.

Dr. Bernard Rollin of the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University states that “virtually all aspects of hen behavior are thwarted by battery cages….The most obvious problem is lack of exercise and natural movement….Research has confirmed what common sense already knew—animals built to move must move.”

But common sense doesn’t always prevail in the world of animal agribusiness, and it’s generally the animals who pay the price. Not only are these birds often abused in ways that would result in criminal prosecution if they were dogs or cats rather than hens, they have almost no legal protection from cruelty. No federal laws regulate the treatment of hens on egg factory farms. And most states’ cruelty codes exempt common agricultural practices, no matter how abusive.

There’s some movement in the right direction, however. In November, Californians made their state—number one in the country for agriculture—the first in the nation to ban battery cages. Demand for animal welfare improvements is now causing some egg producers to literally rip out their cages and convert to cage-free systems. In fact, one national egg producer, Radlo Foods, recently announced it’s getting rid of all its battery cages and becoming completely cage-free.

The trend is increasingly clear: The confinement of hens in battery cages is simply out of step with the moral sentiments of the American public, and the demand for change will only continue to grow. Food retailers—such as McDonald’s—would be wise to take notice and start improving animal welfare in their supply chains.

In honor of “National Egg Month,” egg producers should accelerate this trend and retire their battery cages to make way for cage-free hens. These birds’ lives will be much better than those who would have suffered from permanent immobilization in their barren cages.

It’s hard to imagine a better way for the egg industry to celebrate this month it’s dedicated to itself.

Walk into any McDonald’s in the UK, order an Egg McMuffin, and you’ll be served a cage-free egg. And by next year, all of the whole eggs sold in every McDonald’s in the European Union will come from cage-free hens.

On this side of the Atlantic, however, the story is a bit different. At present, every single egg McDonald’s sells in the U.S. comes from a hen confined in a battery cage—a barren enclosure so tiny, the birds can barely move an inch their entire lives. In fact, according to McDonald’s own U.S. egg supplier guidelines, each bird need have only a mere 72 square inches of cage space—less than a single sheet of paper.

McDonald’s-U.S. isn’t only lagging behind its European counterparts, it’s also lagging behind its own domestic competitors. Burger King started using cage-free eggs in the U.S. two years ago, and retailers such as Quiznos, Denny’s, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. also use cage-free eggs.

McDonald’s shareholders will soon receive proxies asking them to vote on The Humane Society of the United States’ resolution urging the fast-food chain to move in the right direction on this issue. Only time will tell what they may decide, but if recent history on the battery cage issue is a guide, there’s at least some reason for optimism.

Indeed, even McDonald’s own U.S. Animal Welfare Council member Diane Halverson opposes battery cages, recently writing, “The standard industry practice of confining laying hens in battery cages is an institutionalized cruelty that must be abolished.”

As well, in a landslide November vote, in a voter initiative, Californians approved the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act — also known as Prop 2 — a new law making it a criminal offense (with a phase-out period) to confine hens in battery cages, pigs in gestation crates and calves in veal crates. California is the top agricultural state, McDonald’s birthplace and home to hundreds of McDonald’s locations.

The momentum is certainly on the side of emptying the cages. This progress allows laying hens at least the mere ability to walk around, lay their eggs in nests, and engage in other very basic behaviors denied to battery hens. Hopefully McDonald’s will see the writing on the wall and take a more responsible approach to animal welfare. The company may be lagging behind its competitors on this issue, but it’s always better late than never when it comes to reducing the suffering of animals from whom we take so much.

You can tell McDonald’s what you think. Email them here, or call 1-800-244-6227

Photo: above Pork with Bones, below what battery hen cages (the kind raising eggs for McDonald’s) really look like.