Thanks to a link found on Rush Limbaugh.com, I've learned that the Oregon governor signs law ending cage confinement for egg-laying hens. Now, according to the blog post linked to, "......the entire West Coast region of the United States now has the strongest laws in the world for egg-laying hens." With Oregon's law - which is due to go into effect in 2023 - all eggs sold in California, Washington and Oregon must come from hens which have not been confined to cages.
Many years ago, I worked part time at an egg farm in Georgia, so I have some knowledge of how eggs get from chicken to grocery store. The abundance of eggs found in the typical grocery store in the United States is the result of egg farms using mass production to produce the numbers of eggs needed to give the American egg consumer what he/she wants. Without this system of caged eggs laying eggs, which roll onto a conveyor belt, the space needed to support the millions of laying hens would be more than the average egg producer could maintain. The number of workers needed to collect the free range eggs would also increase the cost of producing eggs.
The only way the consumer could afford the increased cost of eggs would be for the government to subsidize the industry in order to keep the price of eggs artificially low.
Even the Humane Society admits that cage-free facilities are necessarily "cruelty-free." I'm sure that it is only a matter of time before those groups currently praising the west coast states for outlawing cages, will demand that egg producers become 100% cruelty-free.
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