Montreal Gazette, 2008.08.04, Letter to the Editor

“Free-range eggs rule the roost ” (Gazette, July 30).
This is an interesting and generally informative article, but it contains some factual errors. The most glaring being that its claim that some hens in cages are given hormones.

This is absolutely false. No chickens raised for egg or meat production in Canada are given hormones. In fact no commercial poultry species in Canada is given hormones.

Secondly today’s commercial laying birds,when provided with optimal diets and management conditions, will produce 330 eggs year, significantly more than the 250 quoted.

Eggs are one of our safest animal products, no matter what the production system, because they come prepackaged in their shells. A world wide review of the literature on the incidence of microbial inclusion in eggs confirmed this but also found that eggs produced by birds in cages actually have the lowest incidence of microbial inclusion.

Also birds housed in cages have lower levels of contaminants such as dioxins than free range birds. Thus eggs produced by birds in cages are marginally the safest eggs produced by any production system.

With respect to bird welfare when comparing production systems one of the best indicators is relative mortality. Free range birds on average can have up to four or five times the mortality of birds kept in cages.

What eggs do I eat? Omega 3 (diet contains flax seed by definition) white (produced only by birds in cages) eggs.

Roger Buckland
Professor emeritus,
McGill University
Rigaud

---

Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Education and public awareness, Letters to the Editor, Poultry
Tags :: animal welfare, Canada, eggs, Farmers, hormones, misconceptions
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---