Would You Like Your Eggs Caged, Cage-Free or Free Range?

Improve animal welfare through consumer advocacy in the market place, not individual rights violating legislation and regulations

I love my breakfast eggs. Scrambled with wilted kale and crispy prosciutto; or over-easy on top of a plantain waffle. Breakfast is my daily hipster moment. I’m sure you’ve noticed that eggs are a lot more expensive these days. A massive avian flu outbreak killing some 58 million laying hens in 2022 meant that the supply of eggs didn’t keep up with demand. This has translated to you and me paying more for every carton. Adding insult to injury, inflation and supply chain issues have also contributed to rising prices. As a result, my 24-pack of Costco organic eggs has been AWOL for a couple of months, and I’m restricted to buying two packs of regular eggs for more money than what I used to pay for organic. (I am not hipsterish enough to pay $10 for a dozen eggs from urban backyard chickens)

But another movement underway is also increasing the price of eggs. Several states, including my homestate of Colorado, have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, laws and regulations mandating that laying hens are raised and kept in a cage-free environment (here’s an egg terminology explainer). In California (and other states), it doesn’t matter where the eggs come from. This means that California rules have out-of-state impacts as nationwide suppliers of eggs often tailor their operations to the laws and regulations of the biggest and/or most restrictive states. As a result, you most likely pay the price for the decisions of California voters, legislators and regulators, whether your state has like laws and regulations on the books or not.

The driving force behind these laws is a concern for animal welfare. We’ve all seen pictures of chickens in cramped quarters, wishing that they had the opportunity to roam free, foraging for grubs and other goodies. But using legislative and regulatory government force to address the problem violates the individual rights of egg producers who are forced to modify their operations often at substantial costs, resulting in a more expensive product. Arguments that the industry will adjust to the new rules and regain its efficiency over time are missing the point that violating individual rights is morally wrong even if for a good cause.

Promoting the welfare of laying hens is obviously a worthy cause, but if we have the ambition to retain—and hopefully expand—our freedoms, individual rights must be protected in the process. If rights violating ballot initiatives and legislative and regulatory action are out of the question, what can you do?

The easiest line of advocacy is to change your egg-buying behavior. Millions of people have already done it, judging from the increasing prevalence of cage-free eggs in your supermarket aisle before the new rules took effect. The egg industry had already taken notice of the changing sentiments in the market place and started to voluntarily adjust. If all of the 2/3 of California voters who supported Proposition 12 refused to buy anything but cage-free and free-range eggs, the egg industry would have been even faster to go cage-free.

If you don’t think this is enough, then form an advocacy group, raise money, and take to the streets, opinion pages, and social media to change people’s views. Organize protests outside breakfast restaurants, supermarkets, ice cream parlors and bakeries that haven’t gone cage free (without violating their property rights), instead of defaulting to “there ought to be a law.” If purveyors of products containing eggs fear one thing, it is a tainted reputation, and facing consumer pressure they would quickly take voluntary steps to move away from cage produced eggs. The more forward-looking among them would even see it as an opportunity to gain market share. With the demand shifting—and with their reputation for good animal husbandry at stake—egg producers would be quick to adjust to the new realities without the threat of individual rights violating government force.

The proper way of affecting change outlined above is a template for consumer advocacy in every part of the economy. Pick your area of concern—food, pharmaceuticals, health insurance, education, finance, banking, social media, etc.—and get to work. Convince your fellow men of the righteousness of your cause, make them voluntarily change their consumer behavior, ask for their voluntary financial support, rally them to voluntarily join you in taking to the streets or spreading the word on social media. But don’t take the easy way out and ask your legislators and regulators to force the rest of us to comply with more individual rights violating legislation and regulation. Because if you’re not willing to put in the time and the money, then perhaps it’s not as important to you as you think.