Food & Drink

Uncaged eggs

City council resolved to require all city-run food-serving facilities use cage-free eggs.

By Janet Gyenes /

Credit: Jupiter Images

As part of the national Chicken Out! initiative, Vancouver city council resolved to support the sunnier side of the egg-laying industry when it passed a motion requiring all city-run food-serving facilities to use cage-free eggs. Now when you chow down on eggs Benny at Kits Beach’s Watermark restaurant or snarf omelette before teeing off at McCleery Golf Course, you can rest assured that the chickens that laid the eggs are as free to frolic as you are.

 

Is “free-range” good enough?


Guest blogger Glenn Gaetz thinks not.

More on chickens

Backyard chickens in Vancouver – Read bcliving‘s comprehensive coverage of the debate.

 

Chicken Out! was hatched by the Vancouver Humane Society to raise awareness about egg-laying “battery hens,” which are kept in small wire cages. Vancouver is North America’s second city to commit to going cage-free, and it is dishing out a challenge to residents, restaurant and retailers: choose certified organic, free-range, or free-run eggs.

“It’s about making more humane decisions,” says Debra Probert, Vancouver Humane Society executive director. “And dropping eggs from caged hens from your shopping list is a really easy way to take action for animals.”

 

North America is well behind Europe, where a number of countries have already banned the use of battery cages. The European Union aims to be cage-free by 2012. What about B.C.? When Whistler resolved to go cage-free in September 2007, it also encouraged its Union of B.C. Municipalities counterparts to get cracking and Chicken Out!

Did you know?


Less than 3 percent of the eggs sold in Canada are laid by roaming hens, according to the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency.

 

To learn more about Chicken Out! visit www.chickenout.ca.