Monday, November 21, 2011
Restaurants So much for your Egg McMuffin
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 10:00 AM
McDonald's took another hit this week after 20/20 broadcast a story about its main egg supplier, Sparboe Farms. Video, secretly shot inside the company's huge egg-laying facility, revealed unsanitary conditions and sickening scenes of animal abuse.
20/20 did not broadcast the entire video, provided by Mercy for Animals, because many people would find it unacceptably offensive. If you're not among those and want to see it, you can find it on Mercy for Animals' website.
The story did prompt McDonald's to end its contract with Sparboe; Target has done the same. Good for them. But, even without the overt abuse the video reveals, all factory-farm animals endure nightmarish, tortured lives.
You may be indifferent to the treatment of animals in factory farms or you may regard it as the necessary result of mass food production. Nonetheless, you can't deny that McDonald's advertising, as shown in the first video above, implies that its eggs are from happy farm chickens. And you have to concur that Sparboe, like most factory farms, tries to keep its facilities out of view.
Understand, too, that the phrase "free range" is all but meaningless. Under USDA standards that can mean, as Jonathan Safran Foer notes, that the hen house doors are opened five minutes a day.
Of course, the president of Sparboe says that the overt abuse at her factory farm was an anomaly:
(By the way, one of the first writers to draw attention to the inhumane conditions in the poultry industry was Bill Gupton, one of the associate editors of Creative Loafing back in the '80s, when I was editor of the paper. That story was widely reprinted. Few of us understood its significance at the time.)
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
I am pleased to see that McDonald's severed their relationship with Sparboe "Farms", but that doesn't mean that they won't get their eggs from another factory farm. We, as their consumers, should demand that they start buying cage-free eggs. While this is not what I would call humane, it is an important step to show industry that people want the animals and animal products they consume to be treated humanely. See here: http://bit.ly/t2oBMH
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food that was farmed ethically, that is good for you, and is sold for a price that fairly compensates those involved in its production, cannot be priced at a dollar.
Just a rule of thumb.
I'm disappointed that McD's severed this relationship. Of all corporations, they have the power to change the culture at factory farms. They need to buy from mass producers in order to keep their costs low. Most McD customers are not high wage earners and don't care where their eggs come from but that doesn't mean McD's has to accept dirty/inhumane conditions from their suppliers. Make Sparboe clean it up in order to win back the business! Change the culture of mass-producers! That makes better eggs for everyone; not just those of us that can afford it.
As with all eggs that become "layers" the (hen) chicks (or poults) come from a hatchery - All the males (being useless to the industry) are destroyed within a day or so. Most ground live.
And even in "free range" or "cage free" facilities - Those standards of "freedom" are never regulated. There could be a door with access to the outside that stays closed 99% of the time. And within a warehouse that holds thousands of birds... Only a few ever get to see the sunlight. There are no "commercial" eggs that would ever meet any rational person's idea or standard of "humane".
Please see: Humane Myth (dot) org.
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