Ethical eggs, or scrambled logic?
The ignorance has been bliss. Better than that, it has been bliss delivered at a bargain price. But just as children eventually grow up, with all the attendant stresses and revelations of adulthood, and the folly of fairytales is exposed by the keen light of lost innocence, truth becomes a life-sized barrier we can no longer avoid or easily bridge.
New Zealand’s major supermarkets are banning caged eggs in favour of free-range over the next decade. The decision follows similar moves overseas, including in Australia, Britain and a fair slice of Europe.
Interestingly, the New Zealand businesses have chosen to go further than the Government’s decision six years ago to phase out battery cages in favour of colony-laid eggs, in which chickens have more room but remain essentially confined.
Ultimately, it is the right decision. In keeping with other moves on pig meat and plastic bags, the supermarkets are recognising a truth that we have known for some time, even if we have chosen to be distracted by convenience and lower price points: someone or something, somewhere, is paying the greater price for the ongoing fairytale of cheap food, clothes and other products.
The plan is a recognition of the truer cost of producing a product in a way that better respects a vital component of the production. Some will see it as brave for such businesses to go beyond minimum government requirements, especially when more than 60 per cent of their customers still reach for the cheaper, caged options.
But others may be concerned that the supermarkets have chosen to usurp consumer choice and appropriate for themselves the role of environmental arbiter and animal rights advocate. We dislike and distrust the attempts at social engineering by our own government; does it feel any better when the machinery is operated by the private sector?
It is also worth asking just how genuine is the supermarkets’ new-found conscience? Will the ban on caged eggs extend to the chicken meat that comes first? Is this merely a way to burnish their green credentials?
And what then? The supermarkets sell 55 per cent of all the eggs produced in New Zealand. Clearly they have considerable power; enough to force painful change on their suppliers. Just as various groups have pushed the supermarkets for change on eggs, others have lobbied on sugary drinks, the impacts of intensive dairying, and the exploitative practices employed in coffee production.
Such groups will surely be emboldened by the supermarkets’ change of heart on eggs and plastic bags. They may feel empowered to push for more change in supermarkets and beyond, to the many other purveyors of cheap consumer products.
Again, that is not necessarily a bad thing: ignorance can no longer be a defence. We know that others are being exploited to featherbed our consumer fairytale. There is a reason that particular product is particularly cheap.
But in working towards a ‘‘just transition’’ for chickens and maybe many others, we might end up establishing a new group of exploited: the vulnerable expected to pay for the prick of conscience that actually awakens our ethical sleeping beauties.
‘‘Ignorance can no longer be a defence. We know that others are being exploited to featherbed our consumer fairytale. There is a reason that particular product is particularly cheap.’’