As sure as eggs is eggs

Right.

I've not posted here for ages. My computer has decided that it doesnt want to be a computer anymore, and so has stopped being a computer.

Since my last post a have sat watching the rain, I've visited Norwich, I've come back to the Isle of Man, and I've become accostomed to 12 hours sleep. I started work to day. I love it. Thats a lie. Its not too bad though.

I have decided to start looking more closely at what I eat. Not for health reasons (im not gay...). I've just started to realise that alot of what you eat causes unnessesery (spelling...?) suffering. I have also decided that the majority of the consumer industry is f*cked up. I have decided to base my summer project on this.

I want to look at different part of the consumer industry (mainly food) such as eggs, meat, fair trade, organic, gm, alcohol. I want to find out where exactly your money goes, what it funds, and the process involved in producing it.

Ill use free range eggs for example. there are two types of free range (so it seems): theres free range, and there is traditional free range. Traditional free range is what most people think of when they think of free range hens, ie happy hens roaming round a farm and laying eggs in a hutch at night, which are collected by a jolly (probably whistling) farmer. Most free range farms are nothing like this. Standards which chickens can be kept and still be called free range are extremely low (there are, however, independant bodies, such as the Soil Association that have higher standards); birds beaks are allowed to be cut off without aneasthetic (spelling?) and dye put in the feed to make the egg yolks brighter and more 'free range looking'.

Hens normally live in social groups and form relationships with one another, as well as hierarchies. Cramming thousands of birds together like they do on alot of 'free range' farms is mentally distressing for creatures that need to live within a tight social group. Many birds are crushed to death or injured because of the large groups that they are kept in, as well as this many birds never actually see outside because only the dominant birds can make it through the doors of the barn. Its like comparing a small group of friends happily watching a football match in a pub to thousands of football fans rioting.

Because only the females lay eggs (duh), any males that are born are killed and because of the stressfull condotions that the hens are kept in they can only lay eggs for about two years, after which they may get sent to the abatoir (spelling, again) to be killed.

Its worrying to think that Free Range is one of the more moral ways of keeping animals.