Never mind the eggs, give hens a break!

Damn egg farmers.

I have no problem with people eating eggs. I don't particularly like their taste, but I understand their function in a diet. Furthermore, I don't think the chickens mind all that much if we eat them. However, what does bug me is battery farming, where hens spend their lives in a space roughly the size of a piece of paper, with no room to stretch their wings or lie down, cranking out their goods until they're too old to produce at which point they're sold off to American school lunch programs to be blended into paste and served to second graders. 

Admittedly, we do the same thing to humans. It's called college and it's not quite as bad because it typically only last four years and you get all the cheap beer you can drink.

So, while I may indulge in the occasional Keystone Light for nostalgia's sake, I'm incredibly vigilant about eating organic, free-range eggs. Admittedly, the USDA's definition of "free-range" can be manipulated by unscrupulous farmers, but I see it as a step in the right direction. As for "organic," I know the farming industry distorts the term way too much, but when it comes to livestock, it's super important. Battery farming is incredibly stressful on the chickens. So stressful, in fact, that they have a habit of dying unless they're hopped up on antibiotics and hormones. Considering humans grossly abuse antibiotics and 80% of the antibiotics we use go to farm animals, it's obvious math that saving a buck or two on a dozen antibiotic-laden eggs will eventually lead to the eradication of our species via some monster, antibiotic-busting, super bacteria.

If they're organic, all those antibiotics and hormones are off limits.

But the first step to this is getting them out of those damn cages - and the poultry farmers of America don't want this to happen, which is why their little PR group, the American Egg Board, sent out this obnoxiously misleading press release last week:

New study finds no nutritional difference between free-range and cage-produced eggs

CHAMPAIGN, IL (August 26, 2011) – Eggs produced by free-range hens are often perceived by the public to be nutritionally superior to eggs obtained from layers kept in traditional battery cages. However, a recent scientific study has called this popular perception into question by finding essentially no differences in the nutritional quality of eggs produced by hens from both management systems, said the Poultry Science Association (PSA).

So many things wrong here. First off, it's a lie. So much of a lie, in fact, that the release admits it 5 paragraphs later by explaining "β-carotene levels were higher in the range eggs, which... may have contributed to the darker colored yolks observed in these eggs during the study."

Huh? How do "no nutritional difference" and "β-carotene levels were higher" mesh? The study indicates  vitamin A levels in both types of eggs were the same, yet β-carotene can be converted into Vitamin A in our body, so technically, the body gets more A from the free-range eggs.

Then, if you go to the actual study in Poultry Science (a publication, incredibly, that has been around since 1908, outliving both Life Magazine and the Weekly World News. How do they do it?), you'll see that the slightly higher fat levels in free-range eggs that the press release dismissively mentions translate to said eggs having more unsaturated fat, including omega-3 fatty acids. Granted, it's a minimal amount, but omega-3s are an essential nutrient that many Americans don't get enough of, so every little bit counts.

And press release aside, the study is rather flawed for a couple reasons. First, while the eggs were tested for cholesterol, n-3 fatty acids, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, β-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E, they were not tested for vitamin D or any of the B vitamins present in eggs. Also untested were calcium, iron, selenium or any of the other minerals that make eggs a healthy nutritional option.

Second, all the animals were given the exact, same diet. One of the points of letting chickens go free range is that you can give them a healthier diet. If the tiny nutritional changes I mentioned about came from hens eating the exact, same food, imagine what would happen with better food?

I'd like to see this study done with free-range, organic, antibiotic-free farming versus doped-up battery farming. But if that happens, fat chance of the eggheads at the Egg Board writing about it.