Your Free Range Eggs...

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Jon
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Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Jon »

YOUR FREE RANGE EGGS...

Under the EU rules for free-range production, nine hens can be crammed into every square metre of floor space & (under the industry’s British Lion and Freedom Foods quality assurance schemes) free-range farmers can house 16,000 hens in one building. There are no rules to say how often the birds must visit the outside world. That’s up to the 'farmer'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2508173/16-000-free-range-chickens-crammed-shed-NEVER-daylight.html

These are your free range hens...Supermarket style.

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Mo
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Mo »

No, MY free range eggs come from my garden. Actually they are only free range for an hour or so a day, and that only in winter after the summer veg are finished. But they get a lot more space than that in their run.
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By Halves
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by By Halves »

I took the decision not to support commercial egg production of any type once I found out what "free range" actually meant so I haven't eaten any eggs, either on their own or in anything readymade, for over a year. I'll have to relearn how to cook them when we actually get some as I've got so used to vegan baking!
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by albertajune »

When my 3 girls are not laying, I buy free range from a local farm.
The chickens do have a large barn where they go at night but during the day are in the farm yard, in the hedgerows, in the house garden and even on the grass verge by the little road. When I go there I have a little chat with them which is lovely.
This is true free range and I could never buy from a supermarket again. Saying that hundreds of chickens packed into a barn, even though not caged, are free range, is a monstrous play on words.
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Mo
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Mo »

Then again, I look for free range eggs on the labels of things like shop cakes (my home baking is everyday, not party fare).
Around 2000 you had to look really hard to find whole eggs Free Range, now you have to look hard at ingredients lists. I'll use my purchasing power to do a little bit better than before and hope the campaigning organisations do their bit to make suppliers live up to the claims. I buy Soil Association milk - if more eggs had their logo (guarenteeing animal welfare as much as no chemicals) - people like me would buy them too.

But it's very hard to be a completely ethical shopper
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fabindia
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by fabindia »

Mo wrote:But it's very hard to be a completely ethical shopper


Agree totally. My hens aren't laying at the moment so Mrs Fab has had to buy supermarket 'free range' eggs.

What about where our milk comes from too? Modern cows are made to produce about 50% more milk per day than their mothers 30 years ago.

So what's the answer? Surely, we don't all want to become vegan.
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Jon
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Jon »

NO, not vegan. The answer is either get your own hens / buy from a local producer.

OR

Prof Nicol recommends buying eggs from retailers with their own inspection schemes, such as Marks & Spencer or Waitrose.

Waitrose, for instance, prides itself on being in regular contact with all its suppliers. All its eggs are free range.

M&S has its own farm assurance scheme which is tougher than any national scheme such as the British Lion standard for eggs. Its suppliers are regularly inspected.

Shoppers can also buy eggs branded with food assurance labels such as the RSPCA Freedom Foods label, under which farms get regular inspections. Or, alternatively, they can buy organic eggs.

While organic labels are no guarantee that the farms are perfect, standards are higher than for free-range.

Under Soil Association rules, organic egg units can have a maximum of 2,000 birds in a flock and six birds in each square metre inside. They also get more access to the outdoors than non-organic free-range birds.


There are choices out there for all of us. Let us try and support the ethical options being made available to us, when we can do so simply through deciding what to put in our trolley. We can all pay an extra 5p or 10p per egg.

Some of the 'free range' supermarket hens have now turned to cannibalism. The barns are infested with red mite. The birds are bald and miserable. I guess its a question of how greedy a society we are trying to justify. Enjoy that extra 5p!

I am not some tree hugging, green voting lefty either - far from it in fact. However, I do think people should be aware of the reality regarding where their 'free-range' supermarket eggs are coming from. I intend to disseminate this article with all the eggs I sell by the gate. Let people make an educated choice.

This is from Sainsburys site, a review on their 'free-range' eggs.

5 out of 5
Lovely eggs

When using eggs for simply eating rather than baking, I'm not bothered as to size but free range is very important so this is great value! The eggs tasted lovely with nice bright, dark yolks like eggs should have


Clearly nobody told this clown that yolks are meant to be a light colour, yellow in fact, not some dodgy orange. I wonder how important buying 'free-range' would be to the reviewer if he was stuck in the barn above. Sad times.
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perchy
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by perchy »

Sadly I doubt all suppliers are inspected, or if they are not enough, although I have to say things are getting better, not good enough but a little better, we have often said that a sticker on the egg boxes showing badly feathered, pecked, sad hens may just put some off buying eggs from caged hens, but sadly for some it won't.
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by By Halves »

fabindia wrote:Surely, we don't all want to become vegan.

"Vegan" is a philosophy that believes that any human use of animals is wrong so if you don't share that you can't become vegan.

However there's no reason to be scared about eating vegan food during periods when you are unable to source animal derived foods that meet whatever welfare standards you feel are appropriate. Just google any recipe you fancy with the word vegan in front of it for loads of ideas :-D
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mrs boodles
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by mrs boodles »

I used to buy free range from the supermarket or go to little market garden where you could actually see the hens out and about when I lived in Sussex. It was a bit of a drive so didn`t go there all the time.

Now that I have moved to live with my daughter I am lucky enough to have 3 hens and they definitely free range unless we are going out. They produce beautiful eggs and I am very proud of them. Regarding the colour of yolks, when I lived on the farm on Dartmoor our hens free ranged as well and were just fed on corn and they produced the richest coloured eggs I have ever seen.

You can`t beat proper free range eggs but some people are not lucky enough to be able to make the choice as to what and where they buy their eggs.
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Mo
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Mo »

mrs boodles wrote:
Regarding the colour of yolks, when I lived on the farm on Dartmoor our hens free ranged as well and were just fed on corn and they produced the richest coloured eggs I have ever seen.

You can`t beat proper free range eggs but some people are not lucky enough to be able to make the choice as to what and where they buy their eggs.


Both grass and maize will colour the yolks. Which is not to say that commercial producers don't add artificials to the feed to give the same effect.
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Jon »

mrs boodles wrote:You can`t beat proper free range eggs but some people are not lucky enough to be able to make the choice as to what and where they buy their eggs.


Presuming most people either have their own hens, know someone who has, have the option of visiting a farmers market or just go to their local supermarket...the point here is we all DO have a choice what eggs we choose to buy.

Check the box for food assurance labels, RSPCA Freedom Foods Label or buy Organic - alternatively buy eggs from M&S or Waitrose. )t'
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manda
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

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Jon wrote:This is from Sainsburys site, a review on their 'free-range' eggs.

5 out of 5
Lovely eggs

When using eggs for simply eating rather than baking, I'm not bothered as to size but free range is very important so this is great value! The eggs tasted lovely with nice bright, dark yolks like eggs should have


Clearly nobody told this clown that yolks are meant to be a light colour, yellow in fact, not some dodgy orange. I wonder how important buying 'free-range' would be to the reviewer if he was stuck in the barn above. Sad times.


I think I would have to disagree with you on this Jon. The colour of the yolk is due to carotenoids which I would think the person was saying because of the dark colour (presumably that orangey colour you get) would indicate free ranging....because they're eating grass,greens etc that contain the pigments that give that vibrant colour. If I compare the egg yolks I have from my chooks that free range all the time there is no comparison...ours are a dark orangey colour compared to the pale yolks of commercial hens purely because of their access to the carotenoids in the grazing in the paddocks.

More the issue is that free range isn't indicated necessarily by the colour because they can feed them colourings to give that colour...they need to know for sure how they live ..the egg can lie unfortunately just as much as the packaging.
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

Post by Jon »

Ah well, my hens really do free range and produce (very) big, yellow yolks, compared to those 'free-range' ones I used to buy from the supermarket, which were a dodgy, darkish orange. That's all I can tell you on that one. I take on board your point that the yolk colour is no indication of the conditions the hen has been kept in. Learn something everyday )like(

This thread was really about highlighting the conditions that some of the hens are being kept in, whilst the eggs they produce are being marketed as 'free-range' by British supermarkets. I remain quite disgusted by this revelation personally. For many years past, I didn't buy battery eggs for a reason!!!
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Re: Your Free Range Eggs...

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Having rehomed both ex-batts and ex free range commercial hens, my observations would be that although, at the time they came to me, they were all in a similar condition physically, my ex free range ladies lived much longer than my batties.

Mind you, I would also add that I am, for the first time in 6 years, almost on the verge of having to buy eggs, and am finding that thought very (ethically) problematic At present I know exactly where my eggs come from, and although my 3 ladies don't free range, they have a decent run and are well looked after and seem content.
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