Nice piece from Top Philpott linking cheap battery eggs to food safety recalls and animal cruelty:
The current egg recall, which grew out of filthy conditions on factory-scale Iowa egg facilities (detailed in my last post), can only be fully understood within this context. Profit margins on eggs that retail for 8 cents apiece are nano-thin; in order to make money, producers have no choice but to think in terms of massive volume. And they have to be ruthless about controlling costs.
In other words, battery egg producers never spend a penny on animal welfare that they don’t have to.
As this becomes common knowledge, I’m betting that it won’t be long before Walmart offers exclusively cage-free eggs. On that day, the battery egg industry’s back will be broken. Link.
