Walk into Diemand Farm, a collection of buildings sitting atop one of Wendell’s green, rolling hills, and an Open sign greets you from the front window of the farm’s small diner. The smell of brewing coffee and freshly baked scones fills the air. The food here is made with ingredients right off the farm, including Diemand’s own eggs.
Behind the diner, back along a dirt road lined with trimmed grass, sits a long, low rectangular building. This is where egg-laying hens do their work.
Open the door and the atmosphere becomes more Midwest than hilltown. The combined squawking of about 3,000 hens—a relatively small amount as egg farms go—builds into a din that requires serious decibels to talk over. We stop between cages, each containing one hen, that are stacked on top of each other and arranged in rows.
Using these cages in Massachusetts bucks a trend begun by animal rights activists who campaigned against confining hens to cages and speeded by consumers willing to pay more for eggs that they see as tastier and healthier—for birds and humans alike.
Ann Diemand-Bucci, owner, laborer, and feisty defender of Diemand Farm, led me farther inside. Diemand-Bucci has no illusions about how her operation looks to non-farmers. “It’s probably the most controversial thing we do on the farm,” she said, telling the story of an Amherst couple’s visit after they had seen the anti-corporate agriculture film Food Inc.
“I had some people when that was first out, they came to the farm and they said, ‘We just saw this movie and we’re wondering what your practices are,’ and they said, ‘Do you keep your chickens in cages?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and they were visibly repulsed. They took a step back.”
Diemand-Bucci says if you look beyond the initial image, there’s a benefit to cages. The traditional way of keeping hens, she said, is efficient and results in lower costs not only for farmers but also for people spending their hard-earned paychecks at the farmstand or grocery store. And contrary to current wisdom, she said, it’s actually healthier for the birds, whose cages keep them from pecking at each other or wallowing in their own droppings.
Jack Kittredge is the policy director at the New England Organic Farming Association. He lives and works on a farm in Barre. It’s much smaller than Diemand-Bucci’s—Kittredge keeps between 50 and 75 egg-laying hens at a time—but his farm is cage-free.
Kittredge says birds do need to stay indoors during cold or inclement weather, but these intervals should be limited, and chickens should have as much freedom as you or I to wander outside.
“That’s their decision,” he said.
In order to be sold as “organic,” Kittredge said eggs should come from chickens that pass their days “on soil, in sunshine, able to peck the soil and eat bugs. That’s where they evolved and that’s what they’re used to.”
Kittredge says farmers should, at the very least, experiment with caged and cage-free eggs, offering both and tracking demand. He acknowledges that the extra labor and space required for cage-free eggs raise the price—but if enough customers choose to pay, than the practice will endure.
I wanted to see where consumers actually stood. I caught up with Christina Rizleris as she picked up a half dozen organic eggs at Atkins market off Route 116 in South Amherst. The international recruiter at Hampshire College says her choice to buy organic comes from her idea of what a happy chicken looks like.
“I think it’s better when the chickens can run around. I’ve seen one too many factory farming documentaries and I don’t think it’s quite humane,” she said. At $3.19 for the half dozen—at least $1 more than she’d pay for twice as many conventional eggs at the supermarket—she said her choice was an expensive one, but worth it. “You could tell the difference.”
Jesse LaFlamme would agree. He owns Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs based in Monroe, New Hampshire. His farm is the hub of a group of 80 family farms that operate under the Pete and Gerry’s name, all dedicated to harvesting eggs from free-roaming birds.
Laflamme said there’s no doubt that going cage-free is costly for farmers. For large farms that typically house 20,000 to 40,000 birds—a quarter of the operations involved with Pete and Gerry’s—farmers have spent more than $1 million each to ditch cages and build new barns, he said.
After that, raising a hen without a cage costs about three to four times more per bird. Because cage-free hens take up more space, “there’s a lot more building cost to spread over fewer hens,” LaFlamme said. “It’s also more labor intensive. Instead of taking care of a giant machine, you’re taking care of hens.”
Laflamme says beyond the expense, it’s riskier to raise birds organically and cage-free. Keeping the free-ranging hens free of disease and safe from predators like foxes, coyotes and hawks demands constant vigilance. Small problems can quickly grow into a disaster; if a bird gets a communicable illness, for example, the farm could lose an entire flock, because using antibiotics to stem the spread of germs violates the terms of organic certification.
Overall, though, LaFlamme says the switch has worked. “The hens are healthier than the expectations,” he said, “I see nothing but positives.”
Hélène Cousin is a research professor in the Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department at UMass Amherst. She oversaw research done by students to determine how caged hens fared in comparison to cage-free, taking a look at farms like Pete and Gerry’s.
Cousin says that caged chickens show only small differences in overall health, even on farms with three to four chickens per cage. “The only big problem they found in health is that chickens housed in cages tend to have bone loss quite frequently.”
Cousin says her students need to do more research before they know exactly why, but appearances can still speak volumes about how caged chickens actually feel. “They can’t move around that much. They can’t scratch, they can’t peck, which is what chickens like to do,” she said, “It’s human interpretation, but I think it’s pretty straightforward that they’re not as happy.”
Despite that assertion, Cousin says that financial concerns among farmers and consumers mean that, right now, some birds are going to have to stay caged. “I totally understand if we’re not moving all organic,” she said, “because honestly, economically, unless you’re willing to pay 20 dollars per dozen, it’s not going to happen.”
While 20 dollars a dozen is a bit of an exaggeration, cage-free eggs from your local supermarket still carry a premium. Steve Holloway, dairy manager at Stop and Shop in Hadley, says demand for cage-free eggs continues to grow, but slowly.
“It goes up a little bit every year, but nothing too crazy,” he said. In Hadley, he orders 120 dozen cage-free eggs a week, compared to three times as many conventional eggs.
Holloway says demand is strongest in higher-income areas. Working at a store in Greenfield, “I sold maybe a third of that up there,” he said.
Nuray Ozcelik is one of the owners of Maple Farm Foods in Hadley. She says that cage-free eggs occupy a similarly small spot on her shelves, but that spot has grown. “They’re a very small fraction of what we sell,” she said. “We have been ordering more, but it’s not big numbers.”
Ozcelik agrees that price still represents a big barrier. A dozen conventionally produced eggs at Maple Farm will run $1.89, but if you want cage-free, you’re going to have to pay a dollar more—and that’s for a half-dozen.
LaFlamme says that though cage-free is a big investment, all farms should move in this direction, with legislation at their backs. “I think at some point there should be a ban on traditional cages, period.”
LaFlamme says that, though the transition may be slow, he sees the momentum shifting to cage-free. “I just don’t see this slowing down,” he said.
At the store level, it’s hard to see that momentum. Demetria Shabazz is a professor in the communication department at UMass. While picking up a dozen conventional eggs at that Stop n Shop, she said it’s easy to demand organic food, including eggs, but the reality of feeding a family takes precedence.
“[When] you’re making those ethical choices, it’s easy to say, but when it comes down to what you’re spending every month on food, in the Northeast, you’re going to go with what’s cost-effective,” she said.
Shabazz says she isn’t sure how to make the price drop, but once that barrier falls, “a whole lot of poor, working class folks who would like to do that, could do that. But, organic, cage-free—whether it’s poultry or the egg—it’s just not cost-effective, particularly in these parts.”
The price of a cage-free egg, Diemand says, hits small farmers hardest.
“I would love to see everything running around and free,” she said, “When I was a little kid, the birds all used to be free.” The cages have stuck around, she says, because though times have changed, the financial constraints of a farm have not. The estimate for converting her modest-sized operation came to more than a quarter-million dollars.
Beyond that, she sticks by the assertion that birds live healthier in cages. So far, the science does not disprove her. In fact, a study taking place at Michigan State University suggests that cage-free birds live shorter lives on average than their caged counterparts.
After hearing that, Diemand-Bucci says, the Amherst couple that took a step back after seeing the cages later wrote letters in support of her operation. No matter what the prevailing view is, she says, she wants consumers to make the call themselves.
“My feeling is, let me show you what we’re doing,” she said, “and then you can decide if I’m being inhumane or not.”•
