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Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

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Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#441

Post by deepvibrations »

crazygringo wrote: post #372
whycome wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the egg industry that will lose out if more people have backyard hens. It’s the poultry industry and the eating general. More people will start to find eating intelligent emotional animals as abhorrent as eating dogs or cats.

People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them. Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

Surely this is more a case that it used to be much harder to be vegetarian and almost impossible to be vegan! Now we actually have a clear choice given the development and availability of so many other foods and supplements. Hence for me to value my enjoyment of foods above the life of another animal seems pretty harsh at best.

Even chicken eggs really are not cruelty free - if you truly love animals, you would stop eating all animal products imo. Otherwise you are simply lying to yourself.

Converse opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFz99OT18k

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#442

Post by cudgy »

How many eggs do most people even buy? Almost every story is talking about eggs and how much of a burden it is on the public, but what are we talking about here? I can buy 18 fancy Vital Farms pasture raised eggs for $12. How is such a small purchase so important in the financial press?

The whole thing is just completely silly. The focus should be on the true cost drivers like healthcare, insurance, child care, and housing.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#443

Post by deepvibrations »

erellsworth wrote: post #426
crazygringo wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them. Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

It makes sense to me. If you grow up seeing animals slaughtered on the regular you probably won't think much of it, especially when the adults around you treat it as completely normal. You grow up in an environment where you might think meat comes from the magic meat factory, when you see an animal slaughtered for the first time it's likely to be shocking enough to turn a lot of people away.

Very true. Just like when slaves were commonplace, it was 'normalised' and many people just turned a blind eye.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#444

Post by vluft »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #427
tptacek wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.

[flagged]

https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#445

Post by wonderwonder »

qq99 wrote: post #93

As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…

"Predators, foxes and hawks, you need defenses"

This one is something I think people maybe don't consider. My brother has chickens, they have a coop but pretty much have the run of his property in a rural area. He has had to kill a coyote and a bob cat so far. Not a reason not to get them, but something to consider before doing so.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#446

Post by Workaccount2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #372
whycome wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the egg industry that will lose out if more people have backyard hens. It’s the poultry industry and the eating general. More people will start to find eating intelligent emotional animals as abhorrent as eating dogs or cats.

People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them. Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

To be fair, food was very difficult to come upon historically. Killing an animal and not eating it was equivalent to burning money for fun.

Vegetarianism (voluntary) didn't become more than an edge case until food was heavily commoditized and readily available.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#447

Post by jahnu »

zoky wrote: post #250
memsom wrote: post #184

Wow! I wondered about this article - US centric. I wondered because eggs are not expensive here. I just looked [1] [2]. I can get a dozen free range for about US$4 at the current conversion rate. They are a supermarket own brand, but even the "fancy" ones are something like that for 6, but some are actually still close to $4 for 12. The US chicken market (not necessarily eggs specifically) was in the Morgan Spurlock…

Hmm. After Spurlock lied through his teeth in his first film, why would anyone trust him ever again?

Well he’s dead now so I guess they never will.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#448

Post by AlexandrB »

42772827 wrote: post #424
AlexandrB wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slavery is an excellent cognate to this. No it's not. I always find the idea that humans are not in some way special (at least to other humans) off-putting. Even animals treat members of their own species generally better than they treat other species. I love animals, I think we should treat them with dignity and respect as much as possible. At the same time I would not hesitate to kill an animal for food or if it…

The cognate here is about how attitudes about systemic actions can change due to a shift in consciousness and access to alternatives. Many people saw black people as not their own kind, and saw no reason — beyond economic imperative - to treat them with compassion. You said yourself: >I think we should treat them with dignity and respect as much as possible. It becomes more possible to treat animals with more respect…

Good points.

I think where we disagree is the question of whether slaughter is necessarily undignified or disrespectful. When I say "treat them with dignity and respect" I think the experience of the animal up to the point of death is what's most important. The slaughter, if done humanely and quickly, is not inherently immoral to me. For example, I think most people would agree that it's better to "put down" a suffering pet than let them die of natural causes.

My problem mainly lies with industrial farming practices like battery cages.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#449

Post by wappieslurkz »

redcobra762 wrote: post #439
wappieslurkz wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take much of a search to find many strong contra arguments to your reply. https://www.peta.org/features/egg-industry-cruelty/

PETA is full of shit, to the point where you could probably safely take on the opposite of their position on any given issue and presume to be correct, generally.

Eggs may be full of shit... but Peta? That's too easy to say. Don't kill the messenger.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#450

Post by 42772827 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #420
42772827 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference between humans and every other animal that has ever existed is our ability to reason about systems and the morality of actions. Some birds will abandon weaker chicks to focus on the ones most likely to survive. Others will allow siblicide. That these behaviors exist and have existed for billions of years is a fact orthogonal to morality because birds don’t have the capacity to reason about systems…

> Some birds will abandon weaker chicks to focus on the ones most likely to survive. Others will allow siblicide. That these behaviors exist and have existed for billions of years is a fact orthogonal to morality because birds don’t have the capacity to reason about systems and the mortality of actions. There's something missing from this analysis. Namely that animals that have many offspring generally expect most of…

> If, for example, a mouse could reason morally it might still let many of its weaker babies die because keeping them alive would not be good for mouse-kind.

I agree. If a mouse could reason morally and inside the system it currently inhabits, it might reason that way because it was unconscious of or had no access to alternatives for survival.

It’s is absolutely inappropriate to assume any morals on a species that has no capacity for reason.

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