Nature Is Not Allowed
Into Some Henhouses

So you’re trying to cut down on red meat and decided that eggs are a good source of protein to replace it. Not quite ready to become a vegan yet, you think eggs will do it for now, as long as they’re natural, cage free and organic, right?
Ah, nothing like the sunny view of happy chicken being called by their names, roaming free on verdant pastures. That is, until the day comes when their true calling is disclosed and they head straight to your breakfast plate.
Now there’s evidence that an even darker side to this picture can burst your bubble faster than you can crack an egg shell.
It turns out some chicken farms have been playing loose with the regulation and labeling organic eggs with what should never dare to speak such word. And there goes another big hoax of our overly self-conscious food culture: just as “natural” may mean everything but, now “organic” is just another name for cheating the system.
All because part of the official, FDA-sanctioned definition for organic implies that chicken spent some quality time outdoors. You know, roaming the pasture, etc. Except that, judging by conditions found in some farms, even prison lifers, with their brief but sometimes lethal daily break under the sun, have it way better than these poor birds.
You can just imagine what goes on in their avian mind, if recent research equating their intelligence to that of your way cuter pets proves correct. But that’s another can of succulent worms, which in any case have been all but banned from their industrial diet.
Risking jumping the tracks just to stick to another farm-related metaphor, we can mention that old Jackie Mason bit about how your Mom would insist for you to drink your milk, sunny, because it’s good for you. Then it came out that milk is being loaded with hormones and all sort of carcinogenic poisons and it could, actually harm you.
His conclusion: even your mother was trying to kill you.
But since yours probably abhorred your pretentious rhetoric about what’s natural and what’s organic, and the differences between vegan and vegetarian to begin with, you no longer have the same luxury of blaming her. Indeed, life was way simpler when you didn’t think you had a choice.
Whatever you decide will be entirely up to you, of course, but we’re not sure many will be too eager to hear about it. Fortunately, as we speak, there’re people stepping on manure in search for good eggs. And for the people who have names for their chickens. Just don’t ever ask them who came first.