Ya, Iād be concerned about keel bone fractures in egg-laying hens, which generally seem pretty bad, and seem more common in (indoor) cage-free systems than cage ones. Welfare Footprint Project assumed multiple fracture events per hen who has any fracture across (mostly indoor, high production) systems they analyzed.
Rufener and Makagon (2020) looked at prevalences across (mostly indoor?) systems:
Iād guess fracture rates are lower for hens with lower egg production per hen, all else equal.
Yeah, keel bone fracturesāand bone issues in generalāis something Iād love to get more data on. I couldnāt find any publicly-available information about this for most of the farms I evaluated, but I know that Fifth Crow Farm uses heritage breeds and specifically calls out that they have healthier genetics because they lay fewer eggs (which means less calcium is spent on eggshells compared to bone growth).
I couldnāt find any information on whether other farms use heritage breeds, and I donāt know how much you can minimize the risk of fractures in other ways (providing calcium supplementation, not using e.g. forced-molting to induce extra laying cycles, giving hens plenty of outdoor space so they donāt injure themselves in stress). Have you heard anything about ways to mitigate fracture risk?
I think that my message was poorly written. Iām really not a specialist on this question so I donāt know if there exists an egg brand that doesnāt produce net suffering. I just wanted to say that the beginning of your post (āIām not a vegan, but Iāve long felt troubled by the fact that eggs have such a high suffering-to-calorie ratio ā higher, by some calculations, than beefā) seemed inaccurate.
Wait, Iām confused now. I said in my post that eggs are higher-suffering than beef according to some calculations, and you presented another calculation indicating that eggs are higher-suffering than beef, so I think we just agree?
Yep, we agree. I meant that the degree of certainty of āan egg meal produces more suffering than one beef mealā is much bigger than your formulation implied. ie : āhigher, by some calculationsā
Ya, Iād be concerned about keel bone fractures in egg-laying hens, which generally seem pretty bad, and seem more common in (indoor) cage-free systems than cage ones. Welfare Footprint Project assumed multiple fracture events per hen who has any fracture across (mostly indoor, high production) systems they analyzed.
Rufener and Makagon (2020) looked at prevalences across (mostly indoor?) systems:
Iād guess fracture rates are lower for hens with lower egg production per hen, all else equal.
Yeah, keel bone fracturesāand bone issues in generalāis something Iād love to get more data on. I couldnāt find any publicly-available information about this for most of the farms I evaluated, but I know that Fifth Crow Farm uses heritage breeds and specifically calls out that they have healthier genetics because they lay fewer eggs (which means less calcium is spent on eggshells compared to bone growth).
I couldnāt find any information on whether other farms use heritage breeds, and I donāt know how much you can minimize the risk of fractures in other ways (providing calcium supplementation, not using e.g. forced-molting to induce extra laying cycles, giving hens plenty of outdoor space so they donāt injure themselves in stress). Have you heard anything about ways to mitigate fracture risk?
I think that my message was poorly written. Iām really not a specialist on this question so I donāt know if there exists an egg brand that doesnāt produce net suffering.
I just wanted to say that the beginning of your post (āIām not a vegan, but Iāve long felt troubled by the fact that eggs have such a high suffering-to-calorie ratio ā higher, by some calculations, than beefā) seemed inaccurate.
Wait, Iām confused now. I said in my post that eggs are higher-suffering than beef according to some calculations, and you presented another calculation indicating that eggs are higher-suffering than beef, so I think we just agree?
Yep, we agree. I meant that the degree of certainty of āan egg meal produces more suffering than one beef mealā is much bigger than your formulation implied. ie : āhigher, by some calculationsā