The lies on egg cartons!

I think this book, already in the first 83 pages, has taught me more about the food I consume than any other source ever has. I am so happy to be assigned to read this book; I can now be an informed consumer. Because of the “Enter the Chicken Shed” section on pages 24-27 I will no longer buy Tyson meats. However, what I really want to focus on in this blog is how deceiving this market is. Like Jake, when I buy foods in the supermarket, honestly, if I saw two cartons of eggs next to each other and one had a stamp on it reading “Animal Care Certified” I would most likely choose these eggs thinking that these eggs came from chickens that have been raised in a more natural environment, or at least have not been mistreated to get the eggs I am buying. However this is not the case. This stamp actually means nothing. As the book explained it is false advertising and it leads people to believe that the hens that laid these eggs were in good conditions and were well taken care of. But, I now know that this is not true and actually the eggs with this stamp were probably treated no better than the other carton of eggs I didn’t choose. I think this is absolutely ridiculous. How can they even try to claim that these eggs are “Animal Care Certified”? Do they consider having no space to turn around in, breaking legs in wire cages, causing pain to the birds when they chop off their beaks, and starving the birds to get more eggs out of them, care for animals? I would think not. They wanted to sell more eggs by looking like the better producer, but instead of changing their ways to actually become the best producer, they let people just think they are! That’s not only horrible, but illegal. And the best part about it is, instead of changing their ways after being caught, they changed the stamp! Which is still misleading. It now reads “United Egg Producers certified: Produced in the compliance with UEP animal husbandry guidelines.” This could mean anything, but to the unknowing consumer, they will most likely think that these conditions are better, safer, and healthier than other producer’s eggs, when this again is just blatant false advertisement. I think they should not be able to put any type of misleading stamp or packaging to boost their sales, unless they put what those requirements are under that claim. Such as “United Egg Producers certified: This means we starve and cut the beaks off of our birds, give our birds minimal space to live in, and many of our birds suffer from broken or injured legs from the wire crates we keep them in!” I think that would definitely affect their sales, but at least it would be true and the consumers of the world would not be misled into thinking one thing when reality is much different. I think the company would then opt to not have this stamp placed on their carton, and consumers would no longer be falsely persuaded into buying certain eggs.