Organic Food

[sierra_le_oli]

Organic food started moving from the specialist magasins biologiques into supermarkets about five years ago. What impressed me is that I can find eggs with the official Agriculture Biologique logo in the budget supermarkets. In the Netherlands, those kinds of products were restricted to the expensive supermarkets. (By the way, don't be fooled by

Comments

[ailbhe]

The taste is what will hurt most to lose, if I'm ever poor again.

[furrfu]

In the Netherlands, those kinds of products were restricted to the expensive supermarkets.

In Belgium, too. But a lot can happen in a couple of years-I've seen a big shift in the range of foodstuffs on offer in the supermarkets in the UK (mostly in Tesco, since that's the one I use most).

The organic sections have grown enormously, and there's a lot more "non-standard" stuff; for example the dairy shelves used to be all cheddar (lowercase c, because it was horrible mass produced stuff), now there's a huge selection of both british and continental cheeses.

but apparently those who do choose organic mostly do so because it's "safe" and GM-free

Yes, and that's quite common everywhere, I think. I know a fair few people who don't eat meat because of concerns over how healthy it is, rather than other factors. [long discourse on my own view of this omitted to save the reader's braincells ]

[ailbhe]

Also, burnt beaks? the what? huh? Yuck.

[sierra_le_oli]

As I understand it, chickens kept in overcrowded conditions will peck at each other, even to the point of death. The faux free-range egg producers don't give the chickens enough room so they have to burn off their beaks in order to stop them from damaging each other. So only those who have earned an EKO, AB or UK-equivalent logo can say that your breakfast egg came from a Happy Chicken.

[totkat]

Surely chickens with no beaks stop eating as they probably can't any more? Doesn't make sense from a commercial standpoint to let them get into that state as you'll get through chickens really quickly after they become mature enough to start laying.

[sierra_le_oli]

I should have been more accurate. Depending on the country, I don't think they're allowed to take off the entire beak, but something like half or more. But with chicks it can be hard to judge how much you're taking off. I'm also not sure how much a difference there is between what is permitted and what actually happens.

The chickens don't stop eating but, unsurprisingly, their ability to eat is affected. Weight loss (after the procedure) or sub-optimal weight gain is evidently preferable to the damage the chickens could do to each other with beaks intact.

For those who don't know, this is a painful procedure, apart from its crippling effects. Beaks are not made of keratin like human nails, etc.