Egg production

“We are challenged to believe that the world of nature is given to us for stewardship, not for abuse. This stewardship involves a sensitivity towards the animals and birds who populate the world with us”

Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty

Flann O’Brien is one of my favourite Irish writers. The name is a pseudonym for Brian O’Nolan who relieved the tedium of his life as a civil servant in the 1940s and 1950s by writing a number of surreal novels, most notably ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’, ‘The Third Policeman’ and ‘The Poor Mouth’. They continue to attract a cult following.
Under another pseudonym, ‘Myles na Gopaleen’, he penned a humorous column, ‘An Cruiskeen Lawn’, for The Irish Times, which ran from the 1940s to the 1960s. A collection of the columns has been published with the title ‘The Best of Myles’.
In the column he invented a series of characters who offer a zany view of life. One of them was of a garrulous Dubliner who pesters his neighbours in the bus queue about the acting and observations of his brother. Some years ago, the actor, Eamon Morrissey, dramatised a series of these dialogues in a show called ‘The Brother’.
I realise that tastes in humour are personal, but I must say that I find the following dialogue on eggs hilarious:
“The Brother can’t look at an egg. Is that so?
Can’t stand the sight of an egg at all.
Rashers, ham, fish, anything you like to mention – he’ll eat them all and ask for more. But he can’t go the egg. Thanks very much all the same but no eggs. The egg is barred.
I see.
I do often hear him talking about the danger of eggs. You can get all classes of diseases from eggs, so the brother says.
That is disturbing news.
The trouble is that the egg never dies. It is full of all classes of microbes and once the egg is down below in your bag, they do start moving around and eating things, delighted with themselves. No trouble to them to start some class of an ulcer on the sides of the bag.
I see.
Just imagine all your men down there walking up and down your stomach and maybe breeding families, chawing and drinking and feeding away there, it’s a wonder we’re not all in our graves man, with all them hens in the country.
I must remember to avoid eggs.
I chance an odd one meself but one of these days I’ll be a sorry man. Here’s me Drimnagh bus.
I’ll have to lave yeh.
Goodbye.”
Not so hilarious is a report on battery egg production in a recent Independent on Sunday. ‘Compassion in World Farming’, along with an Independent journalist visited Holsworthy Beacon Farm in Devon, a family-owned entity which produces more than 100 million eggs a year for Noble Foods, a company which supplies 70 per cent of the UK egg market.
Set in a rural idyll, the reality inside the farm is grim. Conditions at the farm are thought to be representative of other battery chicken plants across the country. Chickens are crammed five to a cage, stocked in rows from floor to ceiling.
Hens were unable to spread their wings fully, nest or exhibit other natural behaviour. Some had large bare patches where they had lost their feathers.
Dr Lesley Lambert, director of research for ‘Compassion in World Farming’, claims that “caged birds have little space in which to move. Throughout their adult life they cannot exercise. The amount of space they have in a barren battery cage is less than a sheet of A4 paper per hen. They spend their whole lives standing on a wire mesh. The system is designed for maximum production, without any reference to animal welfare. They never, ever go outdoors, have natural light or exercise.”
The European Union banned these conditions for egg production in 1997. As a result of lobbying by the egg industry, Britain has managed to stave off the implementation of the ban until 2012, when the barren cages are to be replaced by slightly larger ‘enriched’ cages with perches.
I do not know what conditions apply about egg-production in Ireland, but suspect it may not be much different than in Britain.
Why should we care about battery egg production? Is it not an example of the cheap food policies that have been pursued since the end of the Second World War in Western Europe and the US? Have we not bought enthusiastically into these policies?
I suggest we should care for two reasons. From the Christian perspective we are challenged to believe that the world of nature is given to us for stewardship, not for abuse. Part of this stewardship involves a sensitivity towards the animals and birds who populate the world with us. They also reveal the glory of God in tangible ways. The point is well made in William Blake’s poem, ‘The Lamb’:

“Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice.
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child.”

The second reason we should care is that we are, physically, what we eat and drink. So we need to be concerned about the food chain. Food produced in forced circumstances, sometimes with the addition of chemicals, is unlikely to enhance our health. People often speculate about the prevalence of cancer today. There may well be a link between such prevalence and the factory farm syndrome.
Modern life has become so complex. Food production is just another worry in the mix.