Farm Fresh? Natural? Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up To Be

[dragonlady7]

via http://ift.tt/1TctWRA:Farm Fresh? Natural? Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up To Be:

In case you were curious, as I was. I often see “Vegetarian-Fed” and wonder WTF? Chickens are not naturally vegetarian. 

The short answer: most of the stuff on egg cartons is legally meaningless. The rest is misleading at best. 

Comments

[krait]

I have always assumed that "vegetarian-fed" was a polite way of saying "these chickens were not fed industrial chicken feed containing the ground-up remnants of other chickens," as that's a point of concern with regard to factory-farmed hens...

[dragonlady7]

They are normally fed "waste animal byproducts" which is concerning. But vegetarian-fed hens must be then fed supplements, since chickens are not naturally vegetarian, and those supplements are completely unregulated and could legally be anything. Except, one supposes, animal byproducts, else what does the word "vegetarian" even mean? But there's no legal definition.

[krait]

Well, at least vegetarian-plus-supplement-fed hens still sounds better than "non-cannibal fed hens," which would probably get you some pretty sharp lawsuits from the animal-byproduct feeding people... :D

I'd guess that, like cheap pet food, they substitute plant-based proteins for animal-based ones. Are chickens like dogs, or like cats? Dogs are carnivores, but you can feed a dog a food that's built of corn gluten and soy, and it'll be fine (maybe not AS perfectly healthy as one fed an animal-protein-based food, but in the "statistical averages" way, not the "go to the vet right now" way). Cats, however, are obligate carnivores, and a cat food made only of plant proteins would kill them. (At least without supplemental taurine. And I don't know where the percentage cutoff might be - would they be okay with 50:50 plant:animal protein sources? 80:20? 95:5?)

[dragonlady7]

Chickens are omnivores, for sure.
My sister's farm switched to organic feed recently, and their feed is made up of corn, oats, and soy, and they use the same feed for meat and egg chickens, and their pork. All the livestock get the same, thing, and in the summer it's no big deal because they can get whatever else they need from the pastures they're kept on. Over the winter, my brother-in-law did a bunch of reading and started supplementing the egg hens' feed with-- mostly calcium, actually, and suddenly their egg production doubled at midwinter, and he realized they weren't getting what they needed. In winter they're shut in a greenhouse, so they really don't have any forage; they go out during the day, but since the greenhouse can't move, the electric perimeter fence can only be moved so far, and they don't get fresh pasture-- besides which, the pasture's not up to much, it being winter.
(There are no meat chickens on the farm in winter; they don't breed them there, so they can just buy new chicks in early spring.)

So, chickens are certainly not obligate carnivores. But some backyard flock enthusiasts will go to pet stores and buy their little flocks mealworms and the like as supplements, because they really don't thrive on a vegetarian diet.