Dear TreeHugger, Get Your Egg Facts Straight

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-02-05 10:30:00 UTC
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It's time for the latest edition of "What the hell, TreeHugger?!" in the ongoing saga that is my love-hate relationship with the site.

Dear TreeHugger,

I've considered you a friend for a while now. I've been gratefully reading along almost since your launch, happy to have you supply me with lots of fascinating, useful eco information in one place.

But I see that one of your writers has today referred to, yet again, "happy cage free hens that get to play outside and frolic with the other farm animals." Read my freakin' blog, TreeHuggers! I just came down on you like a ton of tofu for such uninformed remarks less than a month ago ("No Such Thing as Humane Cage-Free Eggs (Still)").

You remark with sarcasm that Disney-branded eggs are "just what we needed." But TreeHugger--perpetuation of a myth that is sooo easily discredited as a myth if you do a bit of research (or, umm, start reading my blog) isn't something we need either. This "frolicking" idea that you're selling is just as silly and deceptive as what Disney's selling. The irony of your remarks is actually painful: "Sometimes I think that the world is becoming more sane, that people are beginning to understand where food comes from." Me too, TreeHugger, me too. But then even writers for green, supposedly knowledgeable, research-capable Web sites spout nonsense like this.

Not only are you buying into the easily discredited myth that cage-free and free-range eggs are "cruelty-free," but you furthermore aren't even distinguishing properly between "cage-free" and "free-range." They're both loosely defined, and neither comes close to proving "humane" treatment or happy lives for the hens, but still, at least acknowledge that "cage-free" is not "free-range": it's generally a giant, dark shed filled to the max with debeaked birds living in misery and pain (you know, the ones who weren't killed shortly after hatching via suffocation or being ground alive because they were unfortunate enough to be male). The idea that "cage-free" hens "play outside and frolic with the other farm animals" doesn't even border on delusional; it is delusional.

But as annoyed as I am by your up-til-now devotion to and perpetuation of the myth, I do believe that you care and that you can change your egg-glorifying ways. So for your edification, TreeHugger, I again provide links to past posts on this issue:

Love,
Stephanie

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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