The price of eggs

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opas
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The price of eggs

Post by opas »

I watched a programme last week about new regs for battery hens, that the farmers had to provide bigger cages was one of the new rules.
It was said then that there would be an egg shortage, I did not really understand that part because surely the bigger cages only meant that the hens would have more room. That programme was on UK tv, countryfile:countrywise or that sort of show.

I have been in Lidl (Llupia ) today, I wanted flour which is next to the eggs. What a shock that was 10 eggs usually around 1euro 10cents today are priced at 1 euros 89 cents.

Has anyone elso notice the price hike in other shops?
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Sue
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Post by Sue »

Cant find this weeks Dia receipt but see from last weeks Carrefour Market, Elne I paid 1.80€ for 6. I wont buy battery eggs the hens must have roamed outdoors. My grandfather was a farmer with battery hen and the sight of them remains with me.
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Santiago
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Post by Santiago »

If the hens need bigger cages, the farmer's space will have to contain less hens, hence less eggs.

I always buy free-range eggs. I pay more than 2€ for 6 but then I only use a few a week so it makes little difference in the long-run.

I think we live in a strange society where we spend 20 or 30 euros a month on mobile phones, 10€ on a CD, 30€ a week on unecessary petrol who knows how much on Canal+ and Sky to watch mega-rich sportsmen and actors but we want to spend so little on eggs and other food products that animals must be kept in poor conditions, land intensively farmed causing erosion, water polution and greenhouse gases and argicultural workers paid such low wages that their goverment, or charities or foreign aid need to support them. Cheap food and clothing are today's equivalent of the Imperial Era's slavery and child-labour and I hope in the future we will have social reform which brings equality - A proper price for a properly laid egg!
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Robert Ferrieux
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Post by Robert Ferrieux »

[size=150 wrote:"Santiago"][[/size]
I always buy free-range eggs. I pay more than 2€ for 6 but then I only use a few a week so it makes little difference in the long-run.
[/quote
from Helen
If you want to be sure that the eggs are free-range, look for 0FR on the egg. If it's marled 1FR it means that the hens have had limited access to the outdoors. If it's marked 2FR, they've been raised on the ground (élévé sol) and it's the notorious 3FR refuse categorically. The miserable hens have spent their lives in cramped cages, de-beaked & de-clawed& probably rue the day they were born.
It's understandable that people of limited means (i.e. me) have to budget carefully. Do what other people of limited means (i.e. me again) do: use less! Use less luxuries. Yes, iPads & 1 metre screen TV sets & 20 cigarettes a day are luxuries. Healthy food seems to be the very last of our priorities.
Santiago voices it very pertinently when he says
I think we live in a strange society where we spend 20 or 30 euros a month on mobile phones, 10€ on a CD, 30€ a week on unecessary petrol who knows how much on Canal+ and Sky to watch mega-rich sportsmen and actors but we want to spend so little on eggs and other food products that animals must be kept in poor conditions, land intensively farmed causing erosion, water polution and greenhouse gases and argicultural workers paid such low wages that their goverment, or charities or foreign aid need to support them. Cheap food and clothing are today's equivalent of the Imperial Era's slavery and child-labour and I hope in the future we will have social reform which brings equality - A proper price for a properly laid egg!
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opas
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Post by opas »

But the farmer surely did not kill numerous birds when he had to buy bigger cage! he would surely have bought bigger cages and put his orriginal hens in there?

for the record i do not bpay xxx on dcs, cigs or sky channels nor do I spend a fortune on wine as regular contributors to the forum will know.

There must be a call for non free range eggs other wise Aldi, Lidl Carefour, Leclerc, Auchan, Intermarche and any other grand surface OR Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury et al...............would not stock them nor would the producer produce them.
There we shall have to beg to differ!
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Post by ChristineM »

What about Easter Eggs ?
:lol:
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Post by Allan »

opas wrote:But the farmer surely did not kill numerous birds when he had to buy bigger cage! he would surely have bought bigger cages and put his orriginal hens in there?

for the record i do not bpay xxx on dcs, cigs or sky channels nor do I spend a fortune on wine as regular contributors to the forum will know.

There must be a call for non free range eggs other wise Aldi, Lidl Carefour, Leclerc, Auchan, Intermarche and any other grand surface OR Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury et al...............would not stock them nor would the producer produce them.
There we shall have to beg to differ!
The cost of the new cages requied to comply with the regulations is estimated at £25 per hen so it is inevitable that prices will rise. In Britain, egg producers have had to pay out £400 million.

This isn't so that all eggs are free range, the new regulations simply mean that battery hens have room to turn around and flap their wings.
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Post by Webdoc »

opas wrote:But the farmer surely did not kill numerous birds when he had to buy bigger cage! he would surely have bought bigger cages and put his orriginal hens in there?
I think the hens are less costly than the cages and, in the changeover, thousands and thousands of chicken were killed to avoid farmers breaking the law. As such the new regulation rather backfired there.
Debbie and Noel

Post by Debbie and Noel »

Santiago gave an excelllent list of ways of pouring money down the drain. Bravo.

There is one glaring exception. Wining and dining. The art of spending the equivalent of a weeks groceries on two hours in a restaurant.

Noel
Howard Whatmore

Post by Howard Whatmore »

The Countryfile programme seemed to be highlighting the fact that UK egg producers had spent a lot of money to comply with the EU regulations and that the rest of Europe hadn't.
Slaughtering hens seems to have been the French way of dealing with it.
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Santiago
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Post by Santiago »

Hen batteries, like the ones I've visited in Trouillas and Ponteilla, are buildings crammed with as many cages as possible. As well as Allen's point that a cage costs more than a hen, the building is already full. They would need to build another building to contain the extra cages.

Of course there is a call for battery eggs. They are cheap. There's always a call for cheap things. All I'm saying is that with foodstuffs (and clothing), cheapness comes at a price to the animals, the soil, the environment and worker conditions.

We can all pretend that we have so little money that battery hens need to be cooped up, that animals need to be fed growth hormones, that overexploited soils become less and less fertile, that the landscape of the Spanish coast is littered with ugly polytunnels, that children are put to work in farms in the third world.

I think if we could truly see how our foods are produced, we (the western world) would be far more prepared to pay a reasonable price for some of our basics and ignore a lot of the packaged foods, like cereals, biscuits and flavoured rice, never mind the money we spend on luxuries and passtimes.
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Sue
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Post by Sue »

For once I agree in pricipal with what you say but there are people even in the western world who cannot afford to buy the best of everything and therefore even if they dont like doing it buy foodstuff that has been grown or reared in a way they may not like or agree with.
Dylan
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