As I was eating my scrambled eggs this morning, I was looking out of the kitchen window. I noticed the dog at the house across the street and a few doors down. This is a large dog. I have never seen this dog out for a walk before. What caught my attention is this dog lives in a chain link kennel. The kennel is about six foot by six foot, and almost half of it is taken up by a dog house. The dog has enough room to stand in the open space, turn around and get back into the large house.
Why even bother having a dog? The dog is not your companion. The dog is not there for protection, locked up in this cage.
This got me to think about "free range chickens" or "free range eggs". I tried to do a bit of reading about this before posting here, but most websites are so biased. What I did learn, is that there is no standard when a company packages eggs as "free range". The size of the range is not regulated. It seems that most commercial poultry farms that are "free range" house thousands of birds in a large shed. Often this shed will have a small opening, to allow a few birds out to a pen a few at a time. Most "free range" birds never see the outside, as their life cycle is less than 90 days.
From my reading, I believe if you can find a local producer, the term "free range" has much more meaning.
I'm not trying to teach animal rights or anything, it just irritates me that people are buying "free range" eggs, where that term has no real meaning on the life of the chicken. Just like my neighbors "outside dog".
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