Are animal activists calling the shots?

I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump regarding agriculture topics. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing about agriculture or the poultry farmers I know; I think sometimes I just get burned out dealing with the onslaught of misinformation, fear marketing, and flat-out false (and by that, I mean purposely false) information making its way around social media,websites, and our everyday lives.

It can be exhausting, at times, to be a resource for truth and all the good work that farmers are doing each and every day. And it’s frustrating to feel like the animal activists – who want nothing more than to end animal agriculture as we know it – are calling the shots.

Take cage-free eggs, for example. Barely a day goes by without hearing of some foodservice company or retail establishment declaring they will only source eggs from cage-free production systems by {insert timeframe here}. Two of the biggest in the world both made these announcements – McDonald’s in 2015 and Walmart just a couple of months ago.

When that happens, it seems almost a forgone conclusion that most other companies are going to fall in line behind them. In fact, here’s an infographic from WattAgNet.com that shows just the companies who have announced their shift to cage-free eggs in the first four months of 2016!

But guess what? The consumers, by and large, aren’t the ones asking for this switch. According to David Fikes, Vice President, Consumer/Community Affairs and Communications for Food Marketing Institute, “The push for cage-free egg wasn’t mostly by the consumer, but campaigns by animal rights activists.” 

These very words were spoken this week at the Animal Agriculture Alliance spring conference in Washington DC. The animal activist groups – like the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), Mercy for Animals, and many more – are exceptionally good at putting pressure on companies to push their anti-meat agenda. And they are equally adept at describing these moves as the best things to happen since sliced bread for the consumer. Cue the kumbaya music.

Just a few years ago, I visited the HSUS’s headquarters in Washington DC and met with a woman working for its “factory farming” division. (Don’t even get me started on that phrase.) She flat out told me then that she spends 80% of her time on the egg industry and its production methods for egg-laying hens.

Clearly that time has been well-spent – for animal activists.

For consumers, though? Perhaps not so much. Cage-free production systems are expensive to implement, require more land to house less birds, and haven’t been proven to be any better, as a whole, than other egg production systems. (Just check out the research by the Center for Sustainable Egg Supply, which show pros and cons to each of the systems that were studied.) All of this could very easily increase the price of eggs for consumers in the future. 

Farmers and food companies, of course, will adjust if the market asks them to; they are in business to sell eggs and offer food items consumers want, after all. Some egg companies, however, will be better suited to handle the up-front costs of switching to cage-free production than others. (You can read about how complicated this whole switch is here.)

Bottom line for me – as a mom and a consumer: when animal activists dictate what kind of eggs are available, they are taking away my choice at the supermarket or restaurant. And they may also be increasing my food budget while they do that. 

This doesn’t sit well with me. I appreciate my food choices in this country, our safe food supply, and the farmers who are committed to caring for their animals. I personally don’t want to see egg production go back to the way it was in the 1950s, when there was more bird mortality and it took more land, water, and energy to produce eggs. (You can read my post about improvements in the egg industry here.) And I disdain seeing an excellent source of protein and nutrition potentially being taken away from lower-income families who do not have the resources to purchase more expensive options.

But really, as I think about it, that’s what it’s all about for the animal activists – pricing eggs high enough so there is less consumption, driving farmers out of business. 

Are the animal activists calling the shots? For cage-free eggs, I’d say yes. And this should be a huge wake-up call to those of us who support our farmers, U.S. agriculture, and our food choices.