The true meaning of free range

Quite a few people buy free range and barn laid eggs, either routinely or from time to time. Some believe (wrongly) they are getting a more nutritious product or some other health benefit. A few think they are somehow saving the world. And of course many feel it just sounds more humane and gentle.

Whatever the reasons, the industry has responded by supplying eggs labelled as free range or barn laid, generally at a price premium. But some people think there is a problem due to what they regard as a discrepancy between what the egg industry says these terms mean and what consumers think they mean.

In NSW a bill will shortly be passed in the upper house of state parliament which would make it an offence to advertise, package or label eggs as free range or barn laid unless they had been produced under specified conditions. Eggs not meeting the criteria would be labelled as cage eggs (whether the hens were kept in cages or not) and words or images suggesting they were not kept in cages would be prohibited.

The bill has prompted a fierce debate about the meaning of free range, particularly the density of hens in the outdoor areas to which they have access during the day.

The bill specified 750 birds per hectare of outdoor space plus a maximum of six birds per square metre in the shed in which they are confined at night. An amendment increased this to 1500 per hectare to make it consistent with the Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals for domestic poultry (although the Code allows much higher densities when the birds are rotated on to fresh range.)

The RSPCA accepts 1500 per hectare plus nine per square metre indoors, and the Free Range Egg and Poultry association approves 1500 plus 10 per square metre in sheds up to 1000 birds and six over 4000.

If this all sounds like furious agreement, it does not reflect reality. This became obvious when the Australian Egg Corporation, which represents most egg farmers, released a draft standard which would allow free-range egg farms to run up to 20000 hens per hectare.

The Corporation based its figure on consumer research using images of hen density, which found the public was pretty comfortable with levels in the range of 10-20,000. It also has scientific data showing hens cope quite well at densities up to that level.

It pointed out that implementing the density levels in the draft bill would increase the price of free range eggs to $15 per dozen. Even adopting the Corporation's proposed 20000 hens per hectare would increase the price by 50 cents, reflecting the fact that current densities are sometimes higher.

So if opinion research shows consumers are generally comfortable with 20000 hens per hectare as a reasonable definition of free range, why the drastic reduction proposed in the NSW bill?

The explanation is found in Hansard, the transcript of parliamentary debates. It is obvious from this that the underlying motivation for the bill was not to align consumer and egg industry perceptions, but to promote an animal rights agenda.

The bill was presented by the NSW Greens as part of a campaign against high volume livestock production. Not only did it specify densities, it prescribed available shade, shelter and vegetation in an outdoor enclosure; said exposure to natural sunlight and/or artificial light should not exceed 16 hours in any 24-hour period; nominated availability of natural food; and prohibited various management practices including break trimming.

Moreover, by forcing all other eggs to be labelled as cage eggs, it would have led the public to believe there were just two options. That would have cleared the decks for a campaign to demonise egg production as factory farming and insist that all producers adopt the bill's free range specifications.

The Greens argued the bill was based on an understanding of birds as "social, sentient beings that need to develop complex relationships and whose wellbeing is fulfilled only when they can forage for food." In fact, hens in cages lay more eggs than free range hens and there are major doubts about whether all that is true, but even if it was, it does not translate into a particular density. Even humans are comfortable living and socialising in close quarters.

The bill is supported by Labor, which amended it, and by the Shooters and Fishers Party, which supported Labor's amendments.

Several speakers expressed concern that there was no legally enforceable standard for free range eggs, some sounding like they were saving hens from torture rather than talking about a legal definition. One described "how hens are crowded into long, poorly ventilated, completely dark sheds with fully automated egg collection systems and filth, death and suffering." As if.

The bill was opposed by the government, one of whose speakers noted that free range egg production means disease management is more difficult, waste disposal less certain and aberrant behaviour such as cannibalism more likely.

Others noted that existing regulation ensures labelling is not deceptive, food safety is protected and animal welfare is not compromised. As one put it, the government's job is to protect rights, not regulate people's affairs, and a private certification system would be quite adequate to maintain valid free range labelling.

The bill has not been presented to the lower house and will not pass if it is, so it will not become law. The Egg Corporation nonetheless supports the next version of the Model Code being made mandatory on a national basis, although how that would benefit consumers is unclear.

But perhaps the final word belongs to Dr Peter Phelps, the Liberal MP who responded to the Greens' comments describing hens as "social, sentient beings".

"I went into the chicken run and I put to Pickles the proposition raised by The Greens, and she found it was "sound, but simplistic". Whisky, a Marxist chicken, said that The Greens had completely failed to understand the inherent class structure in chicken society. Pebbles merely queried if a rooster crowed in a henhouse and nobody heard it, could it be said to have been crowing? Snowy replied, "Of course it happened because an objective reality is not reliant upon subjective observation."

Pecky and Becky, the anarcho-feminist chickens, said that the whole egg-laying system was a tool of patriarchal oppression and that I would be in trouble if I even thought of bringing a rooster into the henhouse. They also asked, for the purpose of Hansard, could chicken please be spelt "chyckyn"? Becky and Ginger got into a fight over whether the true conservative chicken view is one of tradition or liberty. While Frilly, a Nietzschean, rambled on about "chicken and super-chicken" before handing me a list of those she thought could be disposed of to "improve the situation".

Now that is genuinely free range.

David Leyonhjelm is the Registered Officer of the Liberal Democratic Party (www.ldp.org.au). He works in the agribusiness and veterinary markets as principal of Baron Strategic Services and Baron Senior Placements.