Abstract
This paper investigates what “free-range” eggs are available for sale in supermarkets in Australia, what “free-range” means on product labelling, and what alternative “free-range” offers to cage production. The paper concludes that most of the “free-range” eggs currently available in supermarkets do not address animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and public health concerns but, rather, seek to drive down consumer expectations of what these issues mean by balancing them against commercial interests. This suits both supermarkets and egg producers because it does not challenge dominant industrial-scale egg production and the profits associated with it. A serious approach to free-range would confront these arrangements, and this means it may be impossible to truthfully label many of the “free-range” eggs currently available in the dominant supermarkets as free-range.
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Notes
The Model Code of Practice provides in relation to outdoor stocking density:
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For layer hens a maximum of 1500 birds per hectare.
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When meat chickens use only some of the 10 week cycle on pasture (e.g. 4 weeks) a proportionately higher stocking density than for layers may be used.
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NB: Any higher bird density is acceptable only where regular rotation of birds onto fresh range areas occurs and close management is undertaken which provides some continuing fodder cover (Primary Industries Standing Committee 2002, 28, emphasis added).
The Egg Corporation and some egg producers have interpreted this to mean that there can be a higher stocking density for layer hens where there is rotation of birds onto fresh range areas. However, the most natural reading is that stocking densities higher than 1,500 per hectare are only available for meat chickens
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Parker, C., Brunswick, C. & Kotey, J. The Happy Hen on Your Supermarket Shelf. Bioethical Inquiry 10, 165–186 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9448-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9448-5