To Prevent Salmonella, All Eggs Should Be Cage-Free

The recent egg recall ruffled a lot of feathers, creating an onslaught of media coverage. Folks focused on a number of topics, from how many people got sick (about 2,000) to how many eggs were recalled (more than a half-billion) to the reputation of Wright County Egg owner, Jack DeCoster (he's a big shadeball). Other publications point out the irony that if the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) new egg guidelines had gone into effect before July 9th, the country might have avoided this outbreak altogether.

While the flood of coverage is great for highlighting the nation's food safety issues, nobody's squawking about what's possibly the biggest egg to fry: The dangers of keeping hens in cages.

In terms of reducing the incidence of salmonella contamination and bolstering egg safety, the FDA's new guidelines do a pretty good job. But while the rules address things like refrigeration, pest control, cleaning, and testing for contaminants, they fail to outlaw one of the biggest contributors to salmonella contamination — battery cages. Chicken factory farms, which is where about 95 percent of America's eggs come from, contain millions of hens crammed into indoor cages. Wright County Egg, for example, holds 7.5 million egg-laying hens that never see the light of day. Chickens practically sit on top of each other, oftentimes without enough room to even stretch their wings. Not only are the conditions cruel, they're unsanitary — when a bunch of dirty birds and their excrement are squished together in such tight quarters, it's easy to see how bacteria like salmonella can spread.

Recent research backs up the claims that keeping chickens in battery cages raises the incidence of salmonella. A 2002 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who ate eggs from caged hens were about twice as likely to come down with salmonella poisoning than folks who didn't eat eggs from caged birds. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) cites on its Web site nine studies published in the past five years, all of which found a greater prevalence of salmonella among caged hens than cage-free chickens. Cartons may read "Farm Fresh," but the chickens producing those eggs most certainly didn't see a farm yard, to the detriment of their (and your) health.

States are starting to catch on to these chicken and egg problems. Michigan and California both enacted laws that will phase out the use of battery cages on chicken farms. California went even further, mandating that all eggs sold in the state must be cage-free, or pastured, by 2015. A cage-free hen means just that — birds are allowed to run around outdoors instead of spending their entire lives locked inside a teensy, tiny cell.

It's great that a couple states are taking matters into their own hands, but if this salmonella outbreak tells us anything, it's that we really need federal regulations in place to protect consumers' health. While the FDA oversees egg issues, it's the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that regulates chickens. Sign our petition asking both agencies to enact national regulations that would ban eggs producers from keeping hens in battery cages.