Isn’t it ironic, this whole egg debacle?
It’s ironic in two ways: the first in respect of unintended consequences. There are limits to the effectiveness of forcing behaviours. Intimidated by shouty people with slogans our politicians caved to the lefty social-medials and determined that battery hens were miserable and that they would force the good farmers of this fine country to henceforth change their ways in order to improve the life of the layer. Nobody asked the chooks or the consumers.
Battery hen life is a life of consistency and constraint. There’s the consistency of nutritional standards, the consistency of hygiene standards, the consistency of creature comfort, the relative freedom from disease but, let’s face it: an Eggmund will never climb Everest, they’ll never be allowed to entertain that dream.
‘Out with cages’ came the cry, out to the great outdoors. Yeah, okay – outdoors costs money, harbours more germs, rains, encourages more diseases, leads to less consistent yields along with higher chooktalities, oh, and there are the resource consents, you can’t simply have chickens crossing roads, no matter the reasons, there’s got to be rules and limits.
‘We don’t care about practicalities’ cried the left, ‘make those devil egg-ranchers do it’ they shouted, waving their fists, ‘make them spend a million’ (on average). Many producers simply sighed, put up the ‘closed’ sign, said ‘no thanks’ and walked away. And that’s why we’re short of eggs.
It’s ironic in a second, and more profound, way. In an era when government increasingly intrudes, coerces, forces the citizen, cajoles and controls them, prescribes what they should or shouldn’t digest, intellectually and physiologically, heavies detractors, calls them names and ostracises those who dare deflect, proscribes more and more and more of this and that and deems we eat what they say we should eat, that we live as and how they direct us, and are as happy and healthy as they say we are, and could possibly be.
In short, the modern politician (of too many hues) demands freedom’s range for chooks, but ideological cages for battery humans.
