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A pack of chicken went from $15 to $30 almost literally overnight where I live at the same time as this whole egg debacle. This is despite the fact that egg laying hens are distinct from chickens used for meat.
So now I'm trying tofu, because at least a block of that is still only $3.50.
They are. Been buying 4lb bags of vital wheat gluten, as an alternative to chicken, for around six months. Originally, it was around $18. It's now $22.
EDIT: Mid Feb '23(around twenty days later) - $23.99
EDIT: Mid March '23 - $24.99
make sure to supplement that with something like a bean or legume! wheat protein is missing one of the nine amino acids we need to consume as our bodies don't produce it
Tofu is really good. I hated tofu as a kid but came to love it a dew years ago after a few times. The real kicker is to try it in different ways, it can change its taste and texture.
But yeah, I haven't had chicken in a while because of the price. I can't justify $20 for 5 breasts when I am in-between jobs... Maybe if they are on sale, but I still can't afford that right now.
The main thing is to not treat it as a "meat substitute" but as a different ingredient instead. Asian cuisines represent tofu really well, so many types of textures. Western cuisine typically tries to make tofu a meat substitute in a dish and it doesn't do it justice.
For sure. I use it as a protein. I don't eat it too often, but asian dishes are delicious with tofu. I also cook it like chicken on my stove with a few oils and ingredients. Both are amazing.
I seriously can't find a chicken breast for less than $5 these days. I could get a chicken sandwich from a fast food joint for that price, and I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of cooking it.
I'm actually really excited to try the tofu tonight. I've got a friend of mine who's been eating it for awhile that's shared a recipe with me to start off on the right foot lol.
Yeah, but from our perspectives it's fairly cheap meals. If you dont mind eating almost nothing but chicken, a single one can last a few days. 5 bucks for several meals js a good deal.
Slice into ~1.5cm cubes, marinade in a mix of soy sauce and sesame seed oil, fry in a small layer of oil in a pan. I like to fry mine so they have a nice crunch on one side of the cubes.
I think the egg debacle has been slowly breaking the facade that meat is "cheap".
These days when I go grocery shopping, I see a lot of vegan/vegetarian options that are cheaper AND more balanced nutritionally. I just hope produce didn't cost me an arm and a leg, just so I can make sure I get the essential nutrients
It’s important to note that meat isn’t cheap, it’s subsidized. The cost of meat (and dairy) is partially footed by the government because otherwise, animal agriculture simply isn’t profitable at all. There’s a lot of powerful lobbies keeping this ridiculous tight rope act going.
Meat has never been cheap, and the negative externalities of making it are almost universally ignored. But it \*has\* long been heavily subsidized. Ground beef for example retails for 66 percent cheaper than it woudl without subsidies.
small scale producers sometime use dual purpose breeds. which also usually have better tasting eggs or better tasting meat. but capitalism is capitalism, make 6%-7% more profit on the supply side vs superior quality/taste? sure thing!
so many good things in the ways of food has been turned to shit due to the monetary element. profit needs to be taken out of the agricultural sector if we're ever going to save the planet; and have better quality and tasting food while we're at it.
Watch the iron in tofu. Some brands fortify their product. 12 months and 4 units of blood donated I'm finally within acceptable limits and not poisoning myself with fortified cereal, fortified pasta, fortified tofu, and no iron in this daily multivitamin.
It has to fail completely, to the point of people dying of starvation, for people to revolt like in Sri Lanka. Until that point, people will just continue tightening belts and taking less.
Real revolution means upturning your whole country and possibly losing everything. So the state of things have to be worse than literally losing everything.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. “Oops, must’ve been that inflation!” Capitalists love this simple trick.
Not saying inflation isn’t an issue on its own right, as it is. But it sure does make for a great cover against corporate greed.
And it’s not illegal but dumbasses keep voting republican and moderate while blaming the left for all the problems in history despite never having any power.
[Avian Bird Flu resulted in a decrease in egg-laying hens of 5%, and the price increased by 138%](https://news.yahoo.com/inflation-egg-prices-show-tacit-221217481.html). Cal-Maine reported a [65% increase in profits](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/13/business/egg-prices-cal-maine-foods/index.html), but I don't know if they had any avian flu or not.
Honestly, the letter was pretty shoddy, they cited a lawsuit that alleges animal welfare standards are anti-competitive.
>Second, the plaintiffs allege that a UEP certification program ("the Certification Program" or "the Program") that was promoted as a set of measures for animal welfare was actually intended to reduce the supply of eggs. The Program required egg producers to put fewer chickens in each cage to give the chickens more space. It also prohibited producers from backfilling, that is, replacing caged hens that had died. Under the Program, eggs would be labeled as "UEP Certified" only if 100% of a producer's eggs were produced in compliance with the Program's rules. In response to the charge that the Certification Program was designed to drive down supply and so drive up prices, Rose Acre says that the Program was developed by animal welfare scientists for humane purposes and that it did not limit the production of eggs. Rose Acre emphasizes that the Program's guidelines did not limit the number of hens a producer could own, the number of hen houses a producer could use, or the number of eggs a producer could sell. Additionally, Rose Acre asserts that the prohibition on backfilling did not necessarily reduce the supply of eggs because it tends to prevent disease, social competition, and stress within a flock – all of which lead to increased mortality and decreased egg production.
Like the original meme said, the problem is that overly dense chicken farms are places where diseases develop. And I'm kinda baffled why everyone has taken the "bird flu outbreaks are not actually a big deal" line.
Idk about chickens but look at beef producers during the pandemic. Same situation, record profits in the midst of supposed struggle. Prices jacked to the tits.
Came here to make sure this was known.
Had a bird flu in like 2015 that killed just as many birds, but we didn't see this kind of price hike.
It's greed, nothing more.
We only have shitty "JustEgg" here but I still agree with you. Especially, and I cannot stress this enough, any dish that isn't literally a boiled egg or a fried egg sunny side up but that just has egg in it as some ingredient should just use an alternative. In so, so many dishes the egg is just used for "technological" reasons, as an emulgator or foam or to glaze before baking etc. There are so many alternatives for all of that. If it isn't for the taste of egg itself, just use an alternative.
I've also come to realize that apparently people eat much more eggs than I ever imagined. All these egg debates on reddit really opened my eyes that some people really have egg**s** every day. I usually buy half a dozen and this can last me for two or three months. So at my rate of consumption I couldn't care less about the price to be honest, I once saw that a fair price for the farmers to be able to raise chickens (also male chicks, mind you) in an organic, free range way would at least need 2€ per egg. That's completely ok to me. Organic free range no kill eggs unfortunately are still rather cheap over here (in Germany, I think 3,50€ for half a dozen?) because of pressure by the customers.
i'd prefer to normalize not exploiting the reproductive systems of other beings for something unnecessary that has many viable, non body-exploiting alternatives.
And that is the reason I’m vegan, we need to abolish the industry. Or at the very least get rid of 99% of it due to people who can’t be vegan for health reasons or whatever
Fortunately whoever supplies Costco hasn't gotten the message yet. I don't remember the exact price of 24 eggs when I went last weekend, but it was less than a dozen at any other local grocery stores.
See. That's what proves collusion to me, or at least unscrupulous price hiking. Trader Joe's didn't go up nearly as much as the other supermarkets, and I'm convinced it's the same thing. I just hope that the other sellers end up shooting themselves in the foot over this.
Nooooo you have to eat the resource-intensive disease-spreading animal products from our mega corps! It's the only way they can justify their land monopolies and government subsidies!
My main go-to's, cheap where I live, mileage may vary. Warning: grandma-style measurements, I measure with my heart.
Chickpea curry:
Sautee diced onions and chopped chillis/chilli flakes in oil on medium heat. Add some chickpeas (I use canned, the water can be used for a lot of stuff actually), salt to taste, cook it until just nearly starting to brown, add a can of coconut cream/milk (not like milk substitute coconut milk, like the creamy stuff, comes in a can), fuck it up with curry spices (use more than you think you want). Serve with rice. You can add some lime juice, red lentils (pre-boiled), tablespoon of cornstarch mixed into plant milk or water, peppers or some more vegetables.
Tofu stir-fry. Basically, the recipe is to stir fry a bunch of whatever vegetables you have with tofu. There are two things that make the difference: how you prepare the tofu and the sauce you use. For sauce, I base it on chili sauce, add some vinegar or lemon or lime juice, maybe peanut butter, some soy sauce there are a bunch of options. You'll want to use firm tofu and press the water out from it using a clean towel or paper towels. Then marinate it in a marinade involving something acidic, soy sauce, and something for extra flavour (ginger, onions, garlic, even mustard is kinda ok, whatever, you can find a bunch of more legit ones online). If you're feeling like putting in extra effort, bake the tofu in the oven on like 420F for like 20-30 minutes (dice it first). Start with harder veg (carrots, onion, etc) going to softer ones (ending with leafy greens) adding sauce at the very end. Max heat all the way through.
A chilli sort of thing: sautee onions, add some vegetables including peppers, add a can of crushed tomatoes. Cook it until it doesn't smell like canned tomatoes. Soak textured soy protein in vegetable stock and add it to the sauce, then add some beans. Add a bunch of spices somewhere earlier in the process. Cayenne, paprika, whatever.
Chickpea cous cous. Fry a bunch of vegetables including onions, add in some raisins and a whole orange cut into, like sort of cubes. If you live in one of those weird places where nuts and other dried fruit are cheap add some of that too. Crush a bouillon cube and sprinke it over that shit, then throw a bunch of cous-cous on there. Stir it about on medium heat for half a minute, then pour boiling hot water over it, and you can turn off the heat basically right away. Come back in like five minutes. Bone apple tea.
Stew: Sautee onions, throw in all the vegetables you have at home, this must include at least 2-5 potatoes. Can o' beans or some frozen green peas. Bouillon cube. Something acidic. Cover with water after it's hung out in hot oil for a while. If you live in one of those places where quinoa isn't criminally expensive, two handfuls will always improve stew.
Learn a banana bread recipe if you want to feel joy again. You can substitute vanilla extract with being disappointed that you don't have any vanilla extract, every other ingredient is cheap.
OH FUCK
ok - here is a chili recipe that will last you 5 lunches
ingredients bought at walmart (your prices may vary)
get some beans - one can of great value mixed chili beans 78cents - one can of Brooks Hot Chili beans $1 - one can of Hunts no salt tomato sauce $1.24
one chili powder packet $1
ok now lets get some veg - green onion 75cents - 1 poblano pepper $1 - 2 jalapeno peppers 80cents
one bag of Gardein Chick'n Strips $5
herbs and spices you should have in your home already so im not going include the cost of those
defrost the strips, dice them, bake them for 10-15 min at 350 or until they're juuuust starting to brown
cut up the veg and put them in a pot, add the diced chick'n, time for spices
dump in the packet you bought, then Cayenne pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, a dash of basil and oregano, and cumin. you must not forget the cumin!
I just eyeball the spices, no measuring for this mad lad
mix it up
now add the beans and tomato sauce
put in some water to make it as thick or soupy as you please
cook on stovetop
there you go. 5 lunches for around $10
And what am I gonna eat after that appetizer salad?
Replace the rice with something low carb and high protein like beans or tofu and we might be talking.
Beans are not low carb high protein. I mean maybe in comparison to rice the ratio is better, sure, but in general, no.
Especially since we’re in theory jumping off from ‘chicken farming is evil’ as the starting point, where our protein to carb ratio is like, approaching infinity.
That would be an unpleasant heaven for the few humans that come up there. Endless hordes of cows, pigs and chickens, all looking for revenge on the species that enslaved and tormented them.
And it's not like we have a good reason for it, like most natural predators. We can survive just fine on a vegan diet. We kill for the taste.
What really sucks is there's little research/investment into alternatives for people who don't digest legumes or soy.
EVERYTHING has chickpeas or mushrooms or soy.
I have a multi-page laundry list of vegetables and fruits my body doesn't digest correctly. Some are more severe than others (beans, soy, the entire cabbage family). Plant-based oils are super hit or miss too.
I tried going vegan and couldn't. I'd go pescaterisn but I live in Nebraska. Fish-based meals are absolutely unsustainable. So I pay a premium for eggs from a little old lady who loves her chickens and treats them well. I'm lucky I have that option at least.
Yep. I could go vegan, nbd. But my husband has a legume allergy, which seriously restricts the variety of plant-based foods we can cook.
We eat plenty of tofu and seitan. But him not being able to eat beans, chickpeas, peas, nuts, etc is rough.
They're a different species than what you keep at home. Also, they're labeled, so if you want something that was slaughtered at a reasonable age just read the label on the package: https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/How-old-are-chickens-used-for-meat
Yeah np I know you were looking for the right word but I didn't want to offend because on Reddit if you correct someone they might get defensive so I hope I worded it politely because I certainly didn't mean it as like a criticism
This source calls a chicken that is killed at 1-1.5 years "mature". It's important to note that a chicken in a sanctuary can live 10-15 years.
So the slaughter age of chickens is anywhere from <1% to about 10% of their lifespan.
The equivalent for a human would be roughly 8 months to 8 years old.
I'll let you determine if that is a reasonable age.
Tbh even if they died young, the birds they use Cornish Crosses in the meat industry
They weren't going to live very long. There's people in the chicken threads that have spared CCs but they die from heart issues, legs, etc.
One person said they"saved" a rooster CC but the commenters said putting it in the pot was nicer because they are a genetic hellhole. People preach about pugs being horrible but CCs will stay in one spot even when they have massive areas to roam because their hunger is unquenchable. They are x10 messier than Layers, too
I feel bad for CCs, they're literally bred to die, and even if you extended their stay in life by not killing one, they'll just die because of other things that are far worse. And they still won't live long.
Tldr:the horror isn't that they did young. The horror is their lives in general. Living with unquenchable hunger would be hell
How about you don't eat eggs then? That's what creates demand for these shitty practices in the first place.
And while you're at it, how about you all see chickens as beings that don't deserve to be abused for their eggs in the first place? Them and all animals, actually.
Keeping chickens at all relies on:
- a history of horrible genetic modifications of a wild animal to produce 30X more eggs than they’d lay naturally
- shredding male chicks alive or otherwise disposing of males because they’ll never produce eggs
- exploiting the bodies of laying hens, who develop deficiencies and diseases because laying eggs is very taxing on their bodies
- killing and replacing hens every couple years when their production declines
- environmental and climate impacts from feed production and waste
There are so many things we can eat without using animals’ bodies as commodities.
I just want to point out that none of those (except the bit about having been bred for certain traits) apply to backyard chickens. This is purely a commercial issue.
As long as you have enough room for your girls to roam and a secure enough shelter, there is absolutely nothing wrong, ethically or otherwise, with keeping chickens and eating their eggs. Their litter makes phenomenal compost, they keep a lot of pests out of your garden, and they are able to follow the natural rhythms of their bodies (I.e., slowing egg production in the winter) and lead happy lives.
Hens naturally eat their own unfertilized eggs to reclaim the lost nutrients. If you do insist on stealing em, ensure that they get access to equivalent nutrition to compensate. Which yeah, *should* be the case if they really are being cared for. [Earthling Ed](https://youtu.be/7YFz99OT18k) feels more strongly about backyard chickens than I do, but I think his video on the topic makes a lot of good points.
Furthermore I'd love to know how chicken feed for backyard chickens is somehow an environmental issue like the comment says. They eat literally everything. Their own eggshells, any and all food scraps including meat, leaves, lawn trimmings, bugs, and so on.
If every household had 3 chickens in their backyard (stupid easy to do by the way) there would be no egg industry at all.
Nope. They're still producing eggs at a rate way faster than their organs can keep up with. You're putting them through an undue amount of stress by demanding (in the economic sense, not in an aggressive sense) that someone continue to breed more chickens for you and other backyarders to keep. It's wrong to continue breeding animals into existence when they're born into a cursed life of pain.
I am hesitant to mention this, but if you take a step back you realize it is the goddman meat industry pushing a product you don't need, at an enviromental, social, and ethical cost that is hard to even fathom. Every scientifically respected landmark study has shown that a largely plant based diet is the healthiest for the human animal. Yes, you can eat the meat in small quantities. Do you have to? Should you? whatever you think, it is obvious that a gigantic profit driven industry is muddying the waters and denying science. It is big tobacco all over again except it kills way more things.
The bird flu does not explain the cost of eggs. It is 100% price fixing by oligopolies. We lost at most 7% of egg laying flock at any point, but egg laying efficiency is at record levels. There has been about a 3% decrease in eggs produced and basically no increase in demand. This does not explain a like 160% increase in the cost of a dozen eggs. Avian flu and overall inflation are used by a small number of companies to obscure the reasons for their price hikes, they do not even coming close to actually explaining them
Or just don’t eat eggs? Protein to be found at much cheaper costs. Many people around the world already know this, Americans are just used to having cheap/commercial/factory eggs, so when the price goes up we pitch a fit.
Not arguing in favor of battery farms, but this tweet is demonstrably false. Bird flu spreads faster among free-range chickens because they have more contact with wild birds.
This. While caging chickens is intrinsically cruel on its own, it doesn't really have much to do with transmission rates of bird flu among farmed poultry.
The problem with regards to avian flu isn't the method of containment or housing, it's *keeping mass amounts of birds at all, in any way.* Wild chickens and junglefowl don't usually gather in the thousands to hundreds of thousands.
Not all birds. And there is no cut-off number for what constitutes a "flock", either.
Feral chickens and junglefowl (from which domesticated chickens are descended) typically live in groups containing a rooster, several hens, and their chicks. Chickens exhibit strong pecking order behavior, to which gathering in the thousands would not be conducive.
Even in bird species that do flock in the thousands or more, not all of them flock in massive numbers at all times throughout the entire year, as farmed chickens are made to do.
Not to mention that eggs are cheap because of battery farms. If people think eggs are expensive now I'd love to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth if they had to pay free range cost. Not defending battery farming but things are cheap for a reason.
I don't know what this has to do with capitalism anyway. Capitalism gives people with money too much power over people without money but no system would, inherently, give animals more power. Battery farms are an optimization of production. If workers controlled the means of production they would still want to get the most outcome from the work they put in.
I would argue that in a meritocracy without money, where everybody contributes what they can and takes what they need, those who optimize egg "production" the best would have to be the only ones in charge of it. Without strong moral objection from society as a whole battery farms would be the norm there like in our society.
The order that was issued first was to bring all free ranged birds indoors for this very reason. People who don't know shit about how people outside the city live or how farming works think they know everything. It's so elitist and ignorant, and makes them sound dumb and misguided.
I'm all for socialism but people who don't know shit about shit shouldn't give their opinion no matter where you fall politically.
>I'm all for socialism but people who don't know shit about shit shouldn't give their opinion no matter where you fall politically.
This is basically the reason they had to keep some capitalists around to help manage factories post revision in the ussr. Doesn't matter how good your politics are if you don't know how to do your fuckin job. Socialism ideally involves expert opinions from the people who know what they're doing.
A lot of people should heed Mao's immortal words: no investigation? No right to speak".
I mean…it’s not like socialism or mercantilism or feudalism or whatever somehow has a better record of animal rights.
Animals have been treated like shit, by everyone, everywhere, for all of time, regardless of economic system. I’m not remotely defending capitalism here, I’m just saying that animal rights are a poor choice of area to compare between systems. You go to a farm in Cuba or China or North Korea and they treat chickens as poorly or worse than they do in the US or UK. Social democracies like Denmark and Sweden are somewhat better, but that’s more due to the general liberality of the population on such issues than it’s due to the economic system.
This seems a bit disingenuous.
Nah, that is definitely a solution to the problem. I'm not vegan, but I don't think you're wrong when it comes to how an individual might respond to the scenario. I, for one, am certainly eating far fewer eggs.
I've noticed it becoming increasingly common in leftist spaces.
How are we ever going to find the empathy we need to build a socialist society of flawed animals if we're conditioned to torture and kill the innocent ones for momentary perceived pleasure?
Yeah people who criticize vegans for caring about animal suffering (Which is also nuts, people need to hear how much they sound like psychos when they do this) don't realize that the socioeconomic justifications for avoiding animal consumption are at least as strong as the ethical concerns.
This post got so close to the solution but still failed. The exploitation exists because of consumer demand. We don't need eggs to survive, and that's not something that most people want to hear.
People that think a socialist society would fix all the issues that result from animal agriculture are deluding themselves so they don't have to think about what the actual solution is and how they are part of the problem. Some of them, maybe, but bird flu outbreaks and resultant shortages are not one of them.
I mixed some black salt, nooch and some other herbs w/ soft tofu, spread that on my toast with butter. Deadass tastes the same to me with less horrendous farts afterwards, I miss eggs not at all now
I prefer soft partially-mashed chickpeas to tofu. It's the only time I used canned cause they're already soft and I can use the aquafaba to make mayo without salt so I can go a bit further with the black stuff in an 'egg mayo'.
Totally still get the horrendous farts though.
There is also the fact, that if you want to try and feed a billion people off animals that require personal space to be healthy, you do still have a resource allocations problem absent even capitalism. Might I venture to say, that a society with billions of people, living under a system that didn't prioritize profit-taking, might not be eating animals due to the high resource inefficiency? Might I venture *even further*, and suggest that prioritizing the most complex, resource-intensive methods for obtaining our basic needs (Like getting our nutrients from high order animals, as we do) is a viable competitive strategy for successful capitalists as it monopolizes more finite resources and is a more difficult sort of operation to start up than one that is less resource-intensive, like plant agriculture.
We're all worried about not being able to sustain a population of 8 billion people on this planet, but meanwhile *beef* is the arbitrary staple of so many people's diets. I really don't think the number of people is the real problem!
Yes!!
The utopian idea of decentralizing meat and egg production, buying local, free-range and grass-fed is not sustainable for the amount of animal products we consume. I believe agricultural intensification is good and necessary for food security while minimizing land use. Spreading out the production of animal products instead of drastically cutting back is a non-solution and in no way an efficient use of resources.
Even if you throw all those terms like "local," "free-range," and "grass-fed" at an animal product it's still inherently unethical and there's nothing that will change that. Yes the environmental reason animal products don't make any logical sense is very clear. But even if you move that issue aside by going small scale you still haven't solved the ethical issues, let alone the human health implications.
So the thing is, wild birds give this flu to free range chickens, not just the ones that live in 1 Square foot. I've been lucky so far and haven't lost my flock but it could easily happen.
I'm against factory farming, but the flu is getting both the cruelly treated chickens as well as the humanely treated ones.
Not to mention prices are typically artificially low *because* of these practices. How much do they think eggs will cost if *every* chicken in the market was free range?
Yep, I just don't calculate what I functionally pay for each egg my ladies give me, but i did in the past and my home flock isn't economical if you're comparing it to buying in store. But the store bought eggs only give me eggs, whereas my expensive eggs come with compost processing, companionship, entertainment, and lots more intangible benefits.
It's depressing to think only about dollars. If the only thing you care about is spending less money than you make, you ignore so much of the parts of life that have meaning.
Yeah this is a misleading post, most of those caged chickens aren't affected so far. There's some states that banned caged chickens and they're the most affected with the flu.
It's more easily transmitted to free ranging chickens who are exposed to wild birds. So, counter-intuitively, the chickens in factory farms are safer from this one risk. Sure, yes, once infection gets into the factory farm, there's a larger population affected... but that's not because they live in 1 square foot. It's because there are so many chickens in one place.
I object to the illogical meme. It takes a decent perspective (industrial chicken farming is bad) and then uses antivaxx-level attacks that make people like me feel like they have to step in.
Bad thinking is bad thinking. Even if you're trying to attack bad things.
You're welcome for the info. You might want to phrase your questions differently. The way you asked suggested, to me who was questioned and likely to the folks who down voted you, that you suspected you knew the answer and were being, at best, skeptically curious in a way that supported the argument I was critiquing.
Their dairy is scary video got me.
You might like [this video](https://youtu.be/oY_Dt1jey4M) arguing for veganism as part of an anti-capitalist political stance.
It's virtually impossible to vaccinate agricultural scale amounts of birds and still pay the ridiculously cheap prices Americans and Canadians want. FTFY. In much of Europe it's done regularly.
ETA: unfortunately there's no bird flu Vax anyway though. But they are working on one.
The main reason chickens have 1 sq ft of space is because consumers want cheap eggs. Everyone right now can buy free range eggs and the market would respond to this signal - battery farms would disappear, given that they would no longer be profitable. But people don't really care about animal welfare, environmental destruction, antibiotic resistance etc., as long as they can have cheap eggs.
The best solution to the egg price situation is to stop exploiting animals and stop eating eggs/animal products altogether. It would solve so many problems we're facing today, including the rising prices of groceries.
Should be "these illnesses wouldn't develop so easily." Once developed, they spread from farm to farm from cross-contact with wild birds or droppings that are tracked in. It's not about the spacing of the birds in the facility. It's HIGHLY contagious and can spread quickly through a backyard flock or a free-range flock as they group together to roost and eat and generally like being with each other (because they're a flock and that's how they behave.)
Holy cow, this took off.
Just wanted to acknowledge a few things:
1. I honestly thought the chickens were getting sick because of their living conditions and had not considered that even in the wild they gather together enough to spread illness. I guess this isn't the perfect example after all, although I'm sure factory farming doesn't help.
2. I was also going to mention the price gouging, but I didn't want to get carried away with a meme. It's true that a lot of the cost increase is due to the companies in charge simply demanding more for their product under the auspices that the flu is causing a supply shortage.
3. Going vegan would indeed solve the problem of the price of eggs.
4. Yes, real estate developers do the same thing when building housing, excellent point.
5. Sorry about the tiny text, I am only a lowly leftist.
Thanks for all the comments and upvotes! I feel like I accidentally did that thing where people just post memes for karma, but that was not my intention. Given how flawed I now understand the meme to be, I kinda feel bad. Still, I appreciate all the love and the criticism!
I'm seeing a lot of the same talking points here and /r/conspiracy. Maybe it's a sign we need to focus not on discussion and facts not Twitter screenshots and memes?
Life needs space and freedom to live because it heightens the ability to avoid and thus fight illnesses, lessens death from competition due to overcrowding, and grants mental happiness.
Capitalism denies all of this to monetize symbolic tokens of happiness.
It doesn't actually prevent any of these things.
It ensures them.
Capitalism is incompatible with life.
Capitalism is a death cult.
We actually give them away. You’ll realize chickens are quite efficient at laying eggs lol.
Impossible to use as many eggs as these fiends lay.
One egg a day per chicken is about what you get.
3.
The eggs pile up fast when you skip a few days of eating eggs lol.
Plus I find they taste better. But it could be
psychological. Plus need more chickens just get a rooster if you don’t mind the wake up calls.
Actually that’s ideal. Because some people may be able to farm items others can’t and thus a a community trade of sorts is established.
It’s definitely ideal and way more affordable. You don’t see it often but definitely nice.
Not many places offer the environment like that. We are blessed to be pretty out in the sticks where we have fresh glass bottle milk at the creamery down the street if we want it and grass fed beef literally right from the farm not from a store.
If I can offer any food advice in 2023 it would be go to farmers markets when possible and at the stores only shop on the outside aisles. Everything in the middle is pretty shit other than something like spices and can foods.
You’ll be surprised how much you’ll save by simply not buying anything processed.
This is coming from a guy who can eat an entire bag of family size chips without thinking.
Lmao
Bread isn’t terrible for you.
It’s the insane processed breads with sugar dumped into them.
Nothing wrong with bread.
Obviously, cookies aren’t what we are striving for. But the fresh baked cookies would be more ideal than processed packaged ones.
So on a long stretch I’m sticking to my outside istratrgy lol
A hen will lay roughly every 26 hours, you can multiply that by number of birds I f you want an exact calculation for how many chicken your family needs
Theres also a major farm that massacred their entire livestock and fired everybody after just a few months ago https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/28/egg-factory-avian-flu-chickens-culled-workers-fired-iowa
That's what you would want when an entire flock is infected, actually. You don't want to be patient zero from eating infected livestock, that's how people die from prions and other fucked up bullshit. That's how we got pandemics like covid.
Get backyard chickens if you can. I’ve had chickens for the last 5 years and they provide eggs everyday as long as they are fed. If you have a decent area for them to free roam, you don’t really need to feed them, they eat bugs, worms, and weeds.
You can eat the eggs and the chicken. One year we were snowed in for a little bit and it was just us and 20 or so chickens. We had a few chicken dinners with rice and root veggies.
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Recall reading that the largest egg distributors reported no bird flu outbreaks last quarter, but a profit increase of 65%
They make use of legitimate supply issues as cover to jack up prices and then never lower them.
A pack of chicken went from $15 to $30 almost literally overnight where I live at the same time as this whole egg debacle. This is despite the fact that egg laying hens are distinct from chickens used for meat. So now I'm trying tofu, because at least a block of that is still only $3.50.
This is not the way I wanted plant-based alternatives to become cheaper than real meat. I wanted the price of the veggie ones to LOWER, dammit!
If anything, they'll probably just start raising the price on plant-based alternatives if people start moving over them to save money.
They are. Been buying 4lb bags of vital wheat gluten, as an alternative to chicken, for around six months. Originally, it was around $18. It's now $22. EDIT: Mid Feb '23(around twenty days later) - $23.99 EDIT: Mid March '23 - $24.99
make sure to supplement that with something like a bean or legume! wheat protein is missing one of the nine amino acids we need to consume as our bodies don't produce it
Tofu is really good. I hated tofu as a kid but came to love it a dew years ago after a few times. The real kicker is to try it in different ways, it can change its taste and texture. But yeah, I haven't had chicken in a while because of the price. I can't justify $20 for 5 breasts when I am in-between jobs... Maybe if they are on sale, but I still can't afford that right now.
The main thing is to not treat it as a "meat substitute" but as a different ingredient instead. Asian cuisines represent tofu really well, so many types of textures. Western cuisine typically tries to make tofu a meat substitute in a dish and it doesn't do it justice.
For sure. I use it as a protein. I don't eat it too often, but asian dishes are delicious with tofu. I also cook it like chicken on my stove with a few oils and ingredients. Both are amazing.
You can also dust it with cornstarch and bake it to get it nice and crispy.
I seriously can't find a chicken breast for less than $5 these days. I could get a chicken sandwich from a fast food joint for that price, and I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of cooking it. I'm actually really excited to try the tofu tonight. I've got a friend of mine who's been eating it for awhile that's shared a recipe with me to start off on the right foot lol.
If you are lucky enough to have a nearby costco their chicken is still miraculously 5 bucks.
Closest Costco is unfortunately 2.5 hours away...
That's because it's a huge loss leader for them.
Yeah, but from our perspectives it's fairly cheap meals. If you dont mind eating almost nothing but chicken, a single one can last a few days. 5 bucks for several meals js a good deal.
Oh yeah, for sure. For our family of four we get three meals out of one chicken plus stock that I use for several other meals.
Slice into ~1.5cm cubes, marinade in a mix of soy sauce and sesame seed oil, fry in a small layer of oil in a pan. I like to fry mine so they have a nice crunch on one side of the cubes.
Add 1 Tbsp of corn starch to that mix and bake it in the oven, 350F, 15 mins, flip (i use tongs) 15 mins more.
I think the egg debacle has been slowly breaking the facade that meat is "cheap". These days when I go grocery shopping, I see a lot of vegan/vegetarian options that are cheaper AND more balanced nutritionally. I just hope produce didn't cost me an arm and a leg, just so I can make sure I get the essential nutrients
It’s important to note that meat isn’t cheap, it’s subsidized. The cost of meat (and dairy) is partially footed by the government because otherwise, animal agriculture simply isn’t profitable at all. There’s a lot of powerful lobbies keeping this ridiculous tight rope act going.
Meat has never been cheap, and the negative externalities of making it are almost universally ignored. But it \*has\* long been heavily subsidized. Ground beef for example retails for 66 percent cheaper than it woudl without subsidies.
small scale producers sometime use dual purpose breeds. which also usually have better tasting eggs or better tasting meat. but capitalism is capitalism, make 6%-7% more profit on the supply side vs superior quality/taste? sure thing! so many good things in the ways of food has been turned to shit due to the monetary element. profit needs to be taken out of the agricultural sector if we're ever going to save the planet; and have better quality and tasting food while we're at it.
Try smoked tofu if you can find it, it's so good!
Watch the iron in tofu. Some brands fortify their product. 12 months and 4 units of blood donated I'm finally within acceptable limits and not poisoning myself with fortified cereal, fortified pasta, fortified tofu, and no iron in this daily multivitamin.
Damn, my iron is chronically low. Where can I get some of this dangerously high iron food?
Rice Krispies 30.4mg/100g (US) 8.0mg/100g (UK & Ireland) ... Cornflakes 28.9mg/100g (US) 8.0mg/100g (UK & Ireland) ... Quaker Quick Oats 19.8mg/100g. ... Wheat Biscuits 12mg/100g. ... Bran Flakes 8.8mg/100g. ... Muesli 8.8mg/100g. ... Special K 8mg/100g. ... Shredded Wholegrain Pillows 7.6gm/100g.
At what point does it all just come crashing down? This isn't sustainable for any type of economic market.
I expect we’re going to find out soon enough.
It has to fail completely, to the point of people dying of starvation, for people to revolt like in Sri Lanka. Until that point, people will just continue tightening belts and taking less. Real revolution means upturning your whole country and possibly losing everything. So the state of things have to be worse than literally losing everything.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. “Oops, must’ve been that inflation!” Capitalists love this simple trick. Not saying inflation isn’t an issue on its own right, as it is. But it sure does make for a great cover against corporate greed.
And it’s not illegal but dumbasses keep voting republican and moderate while blaming the left for all the problems in history despite never having any power.
Not even that, they just made it up intirely
[Avian Bird Flu resulted in a decrease in egg-laying hens of 5%, and the price increased by 138%](https://news.yahoo.com/inflation-egg-prices-show-tacit-221217481.html). Cal-Maine reported a [65% increase in profits](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/13/business/egg-prices-cal-maine-foods/index.html), but I don't know if they had any avian flu or not.
Is there a link? I've tried telling people this but I haven't found a good link/article to support it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkydd/wtf-is-going-on-with-absurd-egg-prices-corporate-greed-group-says
Hero
Honestly, the letter was pretty shoddy, they cited a lawsuit that alleges animal welfare standards are anti-competitive. >Second, the plaintiffs allege that a UEP certification program ("the Certification Program" or "the Program") that was promoted as a set of measures for animal welfare was actually intended to reduce the supply of eggs. The Program required egg producers to put fewer chickens in each cage to give the chickens more space. It also prohibited producers from backfilling, that is, replacing caged hens that had died. Under the Program, eggs would be labeled as "UEP Certified" only if 100% of a producer's eggs were produced in compliance with the Program's rules. In response to the charge that the Certification Program was designed to drive down supply and so drive up prices, Rose Acre says that the Program was developed by animal welfare scientists for humane purposes and that it did not limit the production of eggs. Rose Acre emphasizes that the Program's guidelines did not limit the number of hens a producer could own, the number of hen houses a producer could use, or the number of eggs a producer could sell. Additionally, Rose Acre asserts that the prohibition on backfilling did not necessarily reduce the supply of eggs because it tends to prevent disease, social competition, and stress within a flock – all of which lead to increased mortality and decreased egg production. Like the original meme said, the problem is that overly dense chicken farms are places where diseases develop. And I'm kinda baffled why everyone has taken the "bird flu outbreaks are not actually a big deal" line.
Idk about chickens but look at beef producers during the pandemic. Same situation, record profits in the midst of supposed struggle. Prices jacked to the tits.
Yup, just look here: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/beef You'll notice that the increases used to be somewhat consistent.
Came here to make sure this was known. Had a bird flu in like 2015 that killed just as many birds, but we didn't see this kind of price hike. It's greed, nothing more.
Would people who chose to hurt animals also be willfully ignorant about economic suffering?
Animal agriculture is the most normalized dystopian nightmare
Yup. The documentary Dominion showed me the horrors. I think it's free on YouTube.
Yeah, there are great egg alternatives: scrambled tofu for breakfast, flax seeds and/or aquafaba for baking or "JustEgg" for pretty much everything
We only have shitty "JustEgg" here but I still agree with you. Especially, and I cannot stress this enough, any dish that isn't literally a boiled egg or a fried egg sunny side up but that just has egg in it as some ingredient should just use an alternative. In so, so many dishes the egg is just used for "technological" reasons, as an emulgator or foam or to glaze before baking etc. There are so many alternatives for all of that. If it isn't for the taste of egg itself, just use an alternative. I've also come to realize that apparently people eat much more eggs than I ever imagined. All these egg debates on reddit really opened my eyes that some people really have egg**s** every day. I usually buy half a dozen and this can last me for two or three months. So at my rate of consumption I couldn't care less about the price to be honest, I once saw that a fair price for the farmers to be able to raise chickens (also male chicks, mind you) in an organic, free range way would at least need 2€ per egg. That's completely ok to me. Organic free range no kill eggs unfortunately are still rather cheap over here (in Germany, I think 3,50€ for half a dozen?) because of pressure by the customers.
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Soy curds and flax seeds are worse than the ovum of a bird that we've engineered into laying hundreds of times a year? Really?
i'd prefer to normalize not exploiting the reproductive systems of other beings for something unnecessary that has many viable, non body-exploiting alternatives.
And that is the reason I’m vegan, we need to abolish the industry. Or at the very least get rid of 99% of it due to people who can’t be vegan for health reasons or whatever
You should read the novel Tender is the Flesh. A really great allegory for the meat industry.
Beans.
You forgot the price gouging.
You ready the capitalism part right?
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Collusion also helps: ‐"Call the guys. We're gonna make some money *TOGETHER."*
Doesn't even take collusion. "My competitors are taking $5? Raise the price to $4.99. We're gonna milk this crisis for all it's worth!"
Fortunately whoever supplies Costco hasn't gotten the message yet. I don't remember the exact price of 24 eggs when I went last weekend, but it was less than a dozen at any other local grocery stores.
See. That's what proves collusion to me, or at least unscrupulous price hiking. Trader Joe's didn't go up nearly as much as the other supermarkets, and I'm convinced it's the same thing. I just hope that the other sellers end up shooting themselves in the foot over this.
Egg producers in the consumer market didn't, but hatcheries did, making the birds themselves pricier for them to buy.
An "adult" food ready chicken is only 6 weeks old. If there is some kind of heaven it's just going to be full of chicken souls.
Don't forget about all the male egg laying chicks, who are thrown in a shredder when they hatch and their sex is determined.
260 million a year. That's a billion every leap year. We don't need to do that too them.
> We don't need to do that too them. I havent bought eggs nor chicken since 2017 how? simple: I eat other things. WOW! mystery fucking solved
Mind blown. Capitalists hate this one neat trick. 🤯
Nooooo you have to eat the resource-intensive disease-spreading animal products from our mega corps! It's the only way they can justify their land monopolies and government subsidies!
What are ya eating?
mostly some variety of the 20k edible plants that we have on this planet
Gimme a cheap reliable recipe damnit
My main go-to's, cheap where I live, mileage may vary. Warning: grandma-style measurements, I measure with my heart. Chickpea curry: Sautee diced onions and chopped chillis/chilli flakes in oil on medium heat. Add some chickpeas (I use canned, the water can be used for a lot of stuff actually), salt to taste, cook it until just nearly starting to brown, add a can of coconut cream/milk (not like milk substitute coconut milk, like the creamy stuff, comes in a can), fuck it up with curry spices (use more than you think you want). Serve with rice. You can add some lime juice, red lentils (pre-boiled), tablespoon of cornstarch mixed into plant milk or water, peppers or some more vegetables. Tofu stir-fry. Basically, the recipe is to stir fry a bunch of whatever vegetables you have with tofu. There are two things that make the difference: how you prepare the tofu and the sauce you use. For sauce, I base it on chili sauce, add some vinegar or lemon or lime juice, maybe peanut butter, some soy sauce there are a bunch of options. You'll want to use firm tofu and press the water out from it using a clean towel or paper towels. Then marinate it in a marinade involving something acidic, soy sauce, and something for extra flavour (ginger, onions, garlic, even mustard is kinda ok, whatever, you can find a bunch of more legit ones online). If you're feeling like putting in extra effort, bake the tofu in the oven on like 420F for like 20-30 minutes (dice it first). Start with harder veg (carrots, onion, etc) going to softer ones (ending with leafy greens) adding sauce at the very end. Max heat all the way through. A chilli sort of thing: sautee onions, add some vegetables including peppers, add a can of crushed tomatoes. Cook it until it doesn't smell like canned tomatoes. Soak textured soy protein in vegetable stock and add it to the sauce, then add some beans. Add a bunch of spices somewhere earlier in the process. Cayenne, paprika, whatever. Chickpea cous cous. Fry a bunch of vegetables including onions, add in some raisins and a whole orange cut into, like sort of cubes. If you live in one of those weird places where nuts and other dried fruit are cheap add some of that too. Crush a bouillon cube and sprinke it over that shit, then throw a bunch of cous-cous on there. Stir it about on medium heat for half a minute, then pour boiling hot water over it, and you can turn off the heat basically right away. Come back in like five minutes. Bone apple tea. Stew: Sautee onions, throw in all the vegetables you have at home, this must include at least 2-5 potatoes. Can o' beans or some frozen green peas. Bouillon cube. Something acidic. Cover with water after it's hung out in hot oil for a while. If you live in one of those places where quinoa isn't criminally expensive, two handfuls will always improve stew. Learn a banana bread recipe if you want to feel joy again. You can substitute vanilla extract with being disappointed that you don't have any vanilla extract, every other ingredient is cheap.
OH FUCK ok - here is a chili recipe that will last you 5 lunches ingredients bought at walmart (your prices may vary) get some beans - one can of great value mixed chili beans 78cents - one can of Brooks Hot Chili beans $1 - one can of Hunts no salt tomato sauce $1.24 one chili powder packet $1 ok now lets get some veg - green onion 75cents - 1 poblano pepper $1 - 2 jalapeno peppers 80cents one bag of Gardein Chick'n Strips $5 herbs and spices you should have in your home already so im not going include the cost of those defrost the strips, dice them, bake them for 10-15 min at 350 or until they're juuuust starting to brown cut up the veg and put them in a pot, add the diced chick'n, time for spices dump in the packet you bought, then Cayenne pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, a dash of basil and oregano, and cumin. you must not forget the cumin! I just eyeball the spices, no measuring for this mad lad mix it up now add the beans and tomato sauce put in some water to make it as thick or soupy as you please cook on stovetop there you go. 5 lunches for around $10
Rice, peas, carrots, sriracha.
And what am I gonna eat after that appetizer salad? Replace the rice with something low carb and high protein like beans or tofu and we might be talking.
Beans are not low carb high protein. I mean maybe in comparison to rice the ratio is better, sure, but in general, no. Especially since we’re in theory jumping off from ‘chicken farming is evil’ as the starting point, where our protein to carb ratio is like, approaching infinity.
Beans
It’s 7 billion chicks culled in the egg industry every year globally. Super fucked up, when we include fish we kills trillions of individuals yearly
They're starting to sex test the eggs now and just cull/otherwise remove them at that stage. Better than the shredder at least.
At least they have a better fate than the ones that a thrown into a plastic bag and left there to suffocate
That would be an unpleasant heaven for the few humans that come up there. Endless hordes of cows, pigs and chickens, all looking for revenge on the species that enslaved and tormented them. And it's not like we have a good reason for it, like most natural predators. We can survive just fine on a vegan diet. We kill for the taste.
https://pbfcomics.com/comics/amends/
Maybe chicken heaven is human hell
Even worse, they don't want revenge. They just want to understand why we killed them, and they've been given the capacity to ask.
Tbf I don't think you can go to heaven with revenge in your heart, so the 3 people who made it in should be OK.
What really sucks is there's little research/investment into alternatives for people who don't digest legumes or soy. EVERYTHING has chickpeas or mushrooms or soy. I have a multi-page laundry list of vegetables and fruits my body doesn't digest correctly. Some are more severe than others (beans, soy, the entire cabbage family). Plant-based oils are super hit or miss too. I tried going vegan and couldn't. I'd go pescaterisn but I live in Nebraska. Fish-based meals are absolutely unsustainable. So I pay a premium for eggs from a little old lady who loves her chickens and treats them well. I'm lucky I have that option at least.
Yep. I could go vegan, nbd. But my husband has a legume allergy, which seriously restricts the variety of plant-based foods we can cook. We eat plenty of tofu and seitan. But him not being able to eat beans, chickpeas, peas, nuts, etc is rough.
As an owner of chickens this is unimaginable for me. At six weeks old my chickens are a small chick that i fit in my hand that barely has feathered.
They're a different species than what you keep at home. Also, they're labeled, so if you want something that was slaughtered at a reasonable age just read the label on the package: https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/How-old-are-chickens-used-for-meat
They're a different breed. Not species. They're still chickens. It's like with dogs.
Yes, that's what I meant, thank you.
Yeah np I know you were looking for the right word but I didn't want to offend because on Reddit if you correct someone they might get defensive so I hope I worded it politely because I certainly didn't mean it as like a criticism
They're a different *breed*, and we *created* that breed.
What is a reasonable age to slaughter an animal that does not need to die, for the sake of profit?
This source calls a chicken that is killed at 1-1.5 years "mature". It's important to note that a chicken in a sanctuary can live 10-15 years. So the slaughter age of chickens is anywhere from <1% to about 10% of their lifespan. The equivalent for a human would be roughly 8 months to 8 years old. I'll let you determine if that is a reasonable age.
Tbh even if they died young, the birds they use Cornish Crosses in the meat industry They weren't going to live very long. There's people in the chicken threads that have spared CCs but they die from heart issues, legs, etc. One person said they"saved" a rooster CC but the commenters said putting it in the pot was nicer because they are a genetic hellhole. People preach about pugs being horrible but CCs will stay in one spot even when they have massive areas to roam because their hunger is unquenchable. They are x10 messier than Layers, too I feel bad for CCs, they're literally bred to die, and even if you extended their stay in life by not killing one, they'll just die because of other things that are far worse. And they still won't live long. Tldr:the horror isn't that they did young. The horror is their lives in general. Living with unquenchable hunger would be hell
Weird how Winnie regresses through the stages of accumulation while the analysis next to him gets more Marxist.
How about you don't eat eggs then? That's what creates demand for these shitty practices in the first place. And while you're at it, how about you all see chickens as beings that don't deserve to be abused for their eggs in the first place? Them and all animals, actually.
Keeping chickens at all relies on: - a history of horrible genetic modifications of a wild animal to produce 30X more eggs than they’d lay naturally - shredding male chicks alive or otherwise disposing of males because they’ll never produce eggs - exploiting the bodies of laying hens, who develop deficiencies and diseases because laying eggs is very taxing on their bodies - killing and replacing hens every couple years when their production declines - environmental and climate impacts from feed production and waste There are so many things we can eat without using animals’ bodies as commodities.
Thank you. Came to say this.
I just want to point out that none of those (except the bit about having been bred for certain traits) apply to backyard chickens. This is purely a commercial issue. As long as you have enough room for your girls to roam and a secure enough shelter, there is absolutely nothing wrong, ethically or otherwise, with keeping chickens and eating their eggs. Their litter makes phenomenal compost, they keep a lot of pests out of your garden, and they are able to follow the natural rhythms of their bodies (I.e., slowing egg production in the winter) and lead happy lives.
Hens naturally eat their own unfertilized eggs to reclaim the lost nutrients. If you do insist on stealing em, ensure that they get access to equivalent nutrition to compensate. Which yeah, *should* be the case if they really are being cared for. [Earthling Ed](https://youtu.be/7YFz99OT18k) feels more strongly about backyard chickens than I do, but I think his video on the topic makes a lot of good points.
Furthermore I'd love to know how chicken feed for backyard chickens is somehow an environmental issue like the comment says. They eat literally everything. Their own eggshells, any and all food scraps including meat, leaves, lawn trimmings, bugs, and so on. If every household had 3 chickens in their backyard (stupid easy to do by the way) there would be no egg industry at all.
Stupid easy to do if everyone had backyards, unfortunately they don't
So you don't cull males?
I don’t need to? I don’t own a rooster. None of my eggs are ever fertilized.
Nope. They're still producing eggs at a rate way faster than their organs can keep up with. You're putting them through an undue amount of stress by demanding (in the economic sense, not in an aggressive sense) that someone continue to breed more chickens for you and other backyarders to keep. It's wrong to continue breeding animals into existence when they're born into a cursed life of pain.
I am hesitant to mention this, but if you take a step back you realize it is the goddman meat industry pushing a product you don't need, at an enviromental, social, and ethical cost that is hard to even fathom. Every scientifically respected landmark study has shown that a largely plant based diet is the healthiest for the human animal. Yes, you can eat the meat in small quantities. Do you have to? Should you? whatever you think, it is obvious that a gigantic profit driven industry is muddying the waters and denying science. It is big tobacco all over again except it kills way more things.
You forgot the mic drop
The bird flu does not explain the cost of eggs. It is 100% price fixing by oligopolies. We lost at most 7% of egg laying flock at any point, but egg laying efficiency is at record levels. There has been about a 3% decrease in eggs produced and basically no increase in demand. This does not explain a like 160% increase in the cost of a dozen eggs. Avian flu and overall inflation are used by a small number of companies to obscure the reasons for their price hikes, they do not even coming close to actually explaining them
This is correct. This whole comment thread is frustrating after watching means morning news this am.
Or just don’t eat eggs? Protein to be found at much cheaper costs. Many people around the world already know this, Americans are just used to having cheap/commercial/factory eggs, so when the price goes up we pitch a fit.
Actually, companies that never lost birds to avian flu jacked their prices because capitalism too.
Not arguing in favor of battery farms, but this tweet is demonstrably false. Bird flu spreads faster among free-range chickens because they have more contact with wild birds.
This. While caging chickens is intrinsically cruel on its own, it doesn't really have much to do with transmission rates of bird flu among farmed poultry. The problem with regards to avian flu isn't the method of containment or housing, it's *keeping mass amounts of birds at all, in any way.* Wild chickens and junglefowl don't usually gather in the thousands to hundreds of thousands.
Birds absolutely gather in enormous amounts naturally. It’s called a flock, or sometimes, a murmuration. Look it up!
Not all birds. And there is no cut-off number for what constitutes a "flock", either. Feral chickens and junglefowl (from which domesticated chickens are descended) typically live in groups containing a rooster, several hens, and their chicks. Chickens exhibit strong pecking order behavior, to which gathering in the thousands would not be conducive. Even in bird species that do flock in the thousands or more, not all of them flock in massive numbers at all times throughout the entire year, as farmed chickens are made to do.
Not to mention that eggs are cheap because of battery farms. If people think eggs are expensive now I'd love to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth if they had to pay free range cost. Not defending battery farming but things are cheap for a reason.
I don't know what this has to do with capitalism anyway. Capitalism gives people with money too much power over people without money but no system would, inherently, give animals more power. Battery farms are an optimization of production. If workers controlled the means of production they would still want to get the most outcome from the work they put in. I would argue that in a meritocracy without money, where everybody contributes what they can and takes what they need, those who optimize egg "production" the best would have to be the only ones in charge of it. Without strong moral objection from society as a whole battery farms would be the norm there like in our society.
The order that was issued first was to bring all free ranged birds indoors for this very reason. People who don't know shit about how people outside the city live or how farming works think they know everything. It's so elitist and ignorant, and makes them sound dumb and misguided. I'm all for socialism but people who don't know shit about shit shouldn't give their opinion no matter where you fall politically.
>I'm all for socialism but people who don't know shit about shit shouldn't give their opinion no matter where you fall politically. This is basically the reason they had to keep some capitalists around to help manage factories post revision in the ussr. Doesn't matter how good your politics are if you don't know how to do your fuckin job. Socialism ideally involves expert opinions from the people who know what they're doing. A lot of people should heed Mao's immortal words: no investigation? No right to speak".
I mean…it’s not like socialism or mercantilism or feudalism or whatever somehow has a better record of animal rights. Animals have been treated like shit, by everyone, everywhere, for all of time, regardless of economic system. I’m not remotely defending capitalism here, I’m just saying that animal rights are a poor choice of area to compare between systems. You go to a farm in Cuba or China or North Korea and they treat chickens as poorly or worse than they do in the US or UK. Social democracies like Denmark and Sweden are somewhat better, but that’s more due to the general liberality of the population on such issues than it’s due to the economic system. This seems a bit disingenuous.
If more people adopted plant based diets instead of contributing to the exploitation of animals, we wouldn’t have this issue.
But I’ll be downvoted to hell and back if I say the solution is to go vegan.
Nah, that is definitely a solution to the problem. I'm not vegan, but I don't think you're wrong when it comes to how an individual might respond to the scenario. I, for one, am certainly eating far fewer eggs.
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I've been vegan (13 years) almost as long as I've been anti-capitalist and I'm so proud of the intersection of my interests this meme hit
I've noticed it becoming increasingly common in leftist spaces. How are we ever going to find the empathy we need to build a socialist society of flawed animals if we're conditioned to torture and kill the innocent ones for momentary perceived pleasure?
And that's the thing that kills me. Their life is worth one meal to some people. 😖
And they don't even taste as well as some rich people with pepper.
Yeah people who criticize vegans for caring about animal suffering (Which is also nuts, people need to hear how much they sound like psychos when they do this) don't realize that the socioeconomic justifications for avoiding animal consumption are at least as strong as the ethical concerns.
This post got so close to the solution but still failed. The exploitation exists because of consumer demand. We don't need eggs to survive, and that's not something that most people want to hear.
People that think a socialist society would fix all the issues that result from animal agriculture are deluding themselves so they don't have to think about what the actual solution is and how they are part of the problem. Some of them, maybe, but bird flu outbreaks and resultant shortages are not one of them.
All day long complaining about egg prices and still not realizing that we can live without them and not be part of animal exploitation...
But the suffering makes the eggs taste better (/s)
We could just reduce the amount of eggs we eat. I was vegetarian for a year before I gave up on them completely. I miss them but my wallet doesn't.
I mixed some black salt, nooch and some other herbs w/ soft tofu, spread that on my toast with butter. Deadass tastes the same to me with less horrendous farts afterwards, I miss eggs not at all now
I prefer soft partially-mashed chickpeas to tofu. It's the only time I used canned cause they're already soft and I can use the aquafaba to make mayo without salt so I can go a bit further with the black stuff in an 'egg mayo'. Totally still get the horrendous farts though.
This whole thread is turning into a tasty Vegan Recipe collection. 👌
Do you cook it?
Only if I’m making a scramble. Otherwise I just mash it up with a fork and serve it cold like egg salad
Meanwhile, Pooh turns into an increasingly authoritarian figure…lol
But organic free range eggs are expensive too... lol
There is also the fact, that if you want to try and feed a billion people off animals that require personal space to be healthy, you do still have a resource allocations problem absent even capitalism. Might I venture to say, that a society with billions of people, living under a system that didn't prioritize profit-taking, might not be eating animals due to the high resource inefficiency? Might I venture *even further*, and suggest that prioritizing the most complex, resource-intensive methods for obtaining our basic needs (Like getting our nutrients from high order animals, as we do) is a viable competitive strategy for successful capitalists as it monopolizes more finite resources and is a more difficult sort of operation to start up than one that is less resource-intensive, like plant agriculture. We're all worried about not being able to sustain a population of 8 billion people on this planet, but meanwhile *beef* is the arbitrary staple of so many people's diets. I really don't think the number of people is the real problem!
Yes!! The utopian idea of decentralizing meat and egg production, buying local, free-range and grass-fed is not sustainable for the amount of animal products we consume. I believe agricultural intensification is good and necessary for food security while minimizing land use. Spreading out the production of animal products instead of drastically cutting back is a non-solution and in no way an efficient use of resources.
Even if you throw all those terms like "local," "free-range," and "grass-fed" at an animal product it's still inherently unethical and there's nothing that will change that. Yes the environmental reason animal products don't make any logical sense is very clear. But even if you move that issue aside by going small scale you still haven't solved the ethical issues, let alone the human health implications.
So the thing is, wild birds give this flu to free range chickens, not just the ones that live in 1 Square foot. I've been lucky so far and haven't lost my flock but it could easily happen. I'm against factory farming, but the flu is getting both the cruelly treated chickens as well as the humanely treated ones.
Not to mention prices are typically artificially low *because* of these practices. How much do they think eggs will cost if *every* chicken in the market was free range?
Yep, I just don't calculate what I functionally pay for each egg my ladies give me, but i did in the past and my home flock isn't economical if you're comparing it to buying in store. But the store bought eggs only give me eggs, whereas my expensive eggs come with compost processing, companionship, entertainment, and lots more intangible benefits. It's depressing to think only about dollars. If the only thing you care about is spending less money than you make, you ignore so much of the parts of life that have meaning.
Yeah this is a misleading post, most of those caged chickens aren't affected so far. There's some states that banned caged chickens and they're the most affected with the flu.
But, at the same rates?
It's more easily transmitted to free ranging chickens who are exposed to wild birds. So, counter-intuitively, the chickens in factory farms are safer from this one risk. Sure, yes, once infection gets into the factory farm, there's a larger population affected... but that's not because they live in 1 square foot. It's because there are so many chickens in one place. I object to the illogical meme. It takes a decent perspective (industrial chicken farming is bad) and then uses antivaxx-level attacks that make people like me feel like they have to step in. Bad thinking is bad thinking. Even if you're trying to attack bad things.
Thank you for the education. Lol at people who down voted me for asking a simple question. I appreciate your help.
You're welcome for the info. You might want to phrase your questions differently. The way you asked suggested, to me who was questioned and likely to the folks who down voted you, that you suspected you knew the answer and were being, at best, skeptically curious in a way that supported the argument I was critiquing.
Oohh yeah I can see that. I was just being brief because I was doing other things too. U right though.
I made this video for school if anyone's interested, it's vegan and anti-capitalist https://youtu.be/UN-4yOAFHcc
Their dairy is scary video got me. You might like [this video](https://youtu.be/oY_Dt1jey4M) arguing for veganism as part of an anti-capitalist political stance.
"Animals are just as entitled to life as us humans are" Good video. Made me tear up. Fucking love animals.
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It's virtually impossible to vaccinate agricultural scale amounts of birds without battery farming.
It's virtually impossible to vaccinate agricultural scale amounts of birds and still pay the ridiculously cheap prices Americans and Canadians want. FTFY. In much of Europe it's done regularly. ETA: unfortunately there's no bird flu Vax anyway though. But they are working on one.
The main reason chickens have 1 sq ft of space is because consumers want cheap eggs. Everyone right now can buy free range eggs and the market would respond to this signal - battery farms would disappear, given that they would no longer be profitable. But people don't really care about animal welfare, environmental destruction, antibiotic resistance etc., as long as they can have cheap eggs. The best solution to the egg price situation is to stop exploiting animals and stop eating eggs/animal products altogether. It would solve so many problems we're facing today, including the rising prices of groceries.
If you cared that much about the chickens you probably wouldn't be eating them or their eggs, but I guess that's too hard
I'm all for this sub but err this has a simple answer if you want to rebel against capitalism and it's called going vegan.
Should be "these illnesses wouldn't develop so easily." Once developed, they spread from farm to farm from cross-contact with wild birds or droppings that are tracked in. It's not about the spacing of the birds in the facility. It's HIGHLY contagious and can spread quickly through a backyard flock or a free-range flock as they group together to roost and eat and generally like being with each other (because they're a flock and that's how they behave.)
Holy cow, this took off. Just wanted to acknowledge a few things: 1. I honestly thought the chickens were getting sick because of their living conditions and had not considered that even in the wild they gather together enough to spread illness. I guess this isn't the perfect example after all, although I'm sure factory farming doesn't help. 2. I was also going to mention the price gouging, but I didn't want to get carried away with a meme. It's true that a lot of the cost increase is due to the companies in charge simply demanding more for their product under the auspices that the flu is causing a supply shortage. 3. Going vegan would indeed solve the problem of the price of eggs. 4. Yes, real estate developers do the same thing when building housing, excellent point. 5. Sorry about the tiny text, I am only a lowly leftist. Thanks for all the comments and upvotes! I feel like I accidentally did that thing where people just post memes for karma, but that was not my intention. Given how flawed I now understand the meme to be, I kinda feel bad. Still, I appreciate all the love and the criticism!
G O V E G A N
I'm seeing a lot of the same talking points here and /r/conspiracy. Maybe it's a sign we need to focus not on discussion and facts not Twitter screenshots and memes?
Full loop: If chickens had more space then the eggs would cost more.
Get outta here with your logic! /s
so apartment complexes
*thank* you. Factory farming is a cancer upon this planet and the non human animals are the ones that suffer.
Devil's Advocate: If chickens didn't have 1sf of space eggs normal price would be unaffordable because of high demand 🧐
If they didn’t do this then wouldn’t this just be the standard price for eggs?
The laying population in the US has only been reduced by 6%. The tripling of egg prices is nothing but greed.
Life needs space and freedom to live because it heightens the ability to avoid and thus fight illnesses, lessens death from competition due to overcrowding, and grants mental happiness. Capitalism denies all of this to monetize symbolic tokens of happiness. It doesn't actually prevent any of these things. It ensures them. Capitalism is incompatible with life. Capitalism is a death cult.
It’s actually pretty cheap and easy to own a chicken. Got a few myself and the egg crisis was solved for me.
...in the places you're allowed to raise them, yes.
It's still relatively cheap and easy to own a chicken while becoming ungovernable. 😈
Tell that to millions of renters with no means to raise them. Brother really just said “get a chicken, lol”.
I actually didn’t say that. You quoted something no one said. Try it one more time.
How much you willing to sell some eggs for?
We actually give them away. You’ll realize chickens are quite efficient at laying eggs lol. Impossible to use as many eggs as these fiends lay. One egg a day per chicken is about what you get.
That's wonderful. How many chickens have you got?
3. The eggs pile up fast when you skip a few days of eating eggs lol. Plus I find they taste better. But it could be psychological. Plus need more chickens just get a rooster if you don’t mind the wake up calls.
I bet you could set up some sort of communal coop for everyone to help with. I love community-based farms and such, so that sounds awesome.
Actually that’s ideal. Because some people may be able to farm items others can’t and thus a a community trade of sorts is established. It’s definitely ideal and way more affordable. You don’t see it often but definitely nice. Not many places offer the environment like that. We are blessed to be pretty out in the sticks where we have fresh glass bottle milk at the creamery down the street if we want it and grass fed beef literally right from the farm not from a store. If I can offer any food advice in 2023 it would be go to farmers markets when possible and at the stores only shop on the outside aisles. Everything in the middle is pretty shit other than something like spices and can foods. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll save by simply not buying anything processed. This is coming from a guy who can eat an entire bag of family size chips without thinking. Lmao
But the bakery isle is on the outside and that is my weakness…Damn Publix cookies man…
Bread isn’t terrible for you. It’s the insane processed breads with sugar dumped into them. Nothing wrong with bread. Obviously, cookies aren’t what we are striving for. But the fresh baked cookies would be more ideal than processed packaged ones. So on a long stretch I’m sticking to my outside istratrgy lol
Isn't a hen unhappy alone?
They haven’t expressed any unhappiness to Me.
A hen will lay roughly every 26 hours, you can multiply that by number of birds I f you want an exact calculation for how many chicken your family needs
It’s around that. The daylight time will effect their laying schedules as well. But it’s about every day ish.
I have two hens in my back yard that have laid 8 eggs this week. The chickies help eat my scrap food and I compost their poop. It’s a beautiful thing.
What if I told you bird flu has nothing to do with it, it's just billionaires price gouging
Theres also a major farm that massacred their entire livestock and fired everybody after just a few months ago https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/28/egg-factory-avian-flu-chickens-culled-workers-fired-iowa
That's what you would want when an entire flock is infected, actually. You don't want to be patient zero from eating infected livestock, that's how people die from prions and other fucked up bullshit. That's how we got pandemics like covid.
Get backyard chickens if you can. I’ve had chickens for the last 5 years and they provide eggs everyday as long as they are fed. If you have a decent area for them to free roam, you don’t really need to feed them, they eat bugs, worms, and weeds. You can eat the eggs and the chicken. One year we were snowed in for a little bit and it was just us and 20 or so chickens. We had a few chicken dinners with rice and root veggies.