Meet Yer Eats farm tour: Brightwood Vineyard and Farm

Our third and last farm visit was to Brightwood Vineyard and Farm in Madison, VA. We arrived just in time to join the final tour of the day, led by the farmer’s knowledgeable and entertaining young nephew, Aidan. Aidan introduced us to the duck-guarding, wolf-attacking donkeys from “some weird place in the Middle East.”

Next he took us to the sheep enclosure with a bucket of grain, and let us feed the sheep, while explaining to us that sheep are very lazy. Very, very lazy. He seemed to prefer the character of the goats, but they were lodged too far down the hill to include on the tour.

From the sheep pen, we looped up past the flock of ducks that are under the donkeys’ care. Aidan said if they hear wolves howling in the distance, they’ll turn the donkeys out, and if the wolves approach the ducks, the donkeys will attack. Safe from wolves on this day, the ducks were busy running back and forth across their yard for no apparent reason.

Aidan ended his tour with the chickens and their giant guard dog. He showed us the inside of the chicken coop, and pulled a fresh egg from beneath a very displeased hen. He also taught us that while chickens stop laying eggs in the winter, ducks lay year-round.

We ended our farm visit by tasting an array of elderberry and elderflower wines made on the farm. The wines were interesting, but the highlight of the visit, and perhaps of the entire day, was Aidan’s commentary as he guided us around his uncle’s farm. What a cool kid.

We learned a lot, and are looking forward to next year’s Meet Yer Eats tour!

Meet Yer Eats farm tour: Ted’s Last Stand

Finally, the (gray, drizzly) day has arrived for the Meet Yer Eats farm tour!

First stop: Ted’s Last Stand farm and garden in Louisa, VA, home to flowers, veggies, bees, mushrooms, chickens, llamas, donkeys, dogs, and cats. We roamed the grounds, seeing a rooster wrangling, learning about mushroom farming, and petting donkeys.

Ted's Last Stand tent

Dear friend Cheenius, a bee expert, compared notes with a fellow beekeeper.

Farmer Michael Levatino demonstrated rooster wrangling and showed us the rooster’s spurs, which are used to subdue the hens for mating. They are serious weapons–the poor hens! The hens may have been molting, but the flock looked very henpecked, with raw backs.

Ted's Last Stand rooster wrangling

Dear friend Cheenius was VERY excited about the mushroom growing workshops coming up this fall! These oak logs had been inoculated with Shiitake mushrooms and sealed up with wax. The mushrooms should start popping out in a few weeks.

Ted's Last Stand mushroom growing workshop

The llamas were antisocial and kept their distance, but the donkeys were very friendly manure generators.

Ted's Last Stand donkey

Next we were off to the nearby Forrest Green Farm to see, among other sights, MINIATURE COWS! (spoiler alert: they weren’t really so tiny.)

Government gives more money to factory farming

This is disgusting:

U.S. Government Bails Out Chicken Factory Farms

Mercy for Animals gives a nice (frustrating, anger-inducing) summary of the latest government handout to factory farmers, this time to support the factory chicken farming industry. It seems that an economy-driven decrease in demand for chicken products has lead to a glut in the marketplace and a decrease in prices. That combined with the rising cost of feed are causing problems for the big agribusinesses, so good ol’ Uncle Sam is stepping in to buy up the surplus. How nice!

Here’s a newsier version of the story from CNN Money.

The best way for us (above) average citizens to combat factory farming is with our dollars. Please buy from your local free-range chicken farm, where the animals are treated humanely and like animals, not products. Purchasing your meat and eggs from those farms not only bolsters your local economy and supports local, humane farming, but it also takes dollars away from factory farms.

In closing, here’s a picture of free-range broiler chickens from my friend’s farm in Germany. These are happy chickens!

happy chickens

The Omnivore’s Dilemma QotD

From The Ethics of Eating Animals, p. 326-7

To give up eating animals is to give up on these places as human habitat, unless of course we are willing to make complete our dependence on a highly industrialized national food chain. That food chain would be in turn even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, since food would need to travel even farther and fertility–in the form of manures–would be in short supply. Indeed, it is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. If our concern is for the health of nature–rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls–then eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do.

Since the utilitarian is concerned exclusively with the sum of happiness and suffering, and the slaughter of an animal with no comprehension of death need not entail suffering, the Good Farm adds to the total of animal happiness, provided you replace the slaughtered animal with a new one. However, this line of thinking does not obviate the wrongness of killing an animal that “has a sense of its own existence over time, and can have preferences about its own future.” In other words, it might be okay to eat the chicken or the cow, but perhaps not the (more intelligent) pig.

Industrial agriculture is killing our fisheries

Nitrogen and phosphorus from industrial farming and chicken factories is washing into the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico and over-fertilizing algae. The enormous algae blooms take over fish habitats and consume all the oxygen, making hypoxic zones where no aquatic life can survive.

Your Chicken Nuggets Are Killing Your Crab Cakes

The primary source of the chemicals is industrial corn farms in the Midwest, and factory chicken farms in the Mid-Atlantic.

Industrial corn farms over-apply fertilizers to their fields. The crops cannot absorb the entire amount, and rains carry the residual chemical from the corn farms into the Mississippi, which deposits them in the Gulf of Mexico, where they feed the algae bloom.

The chicken factories on the Delmarva Peninsula produce a huge amount of nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich manure, too much of which is washed into the Chesapeake Bay.

I think the title of the linked article sums it up nicely. If you, like me, enjoy Maryland crab cakes or Louisiana shrimp gumbo, stop eating factory-farmed chicken and processed corn-containing products!

 

Happy Friday, egg factory hens!

United Egg Producers and the Humane Society, working together?

From the New York Times:

Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages

The groups said they would ask Congress to pass a law enacting the new standards, which they said would be the first federal law addressing the treatment of farm animals and would pre-empt efforts in several states to set their own standards.

The proposed federal standards would include cages that give hens up to 144 square inches of space each, compared with the 67 square inches that most hens have today. They would also include so-called habitat enrichments, like perches, scratching areas and nesting areas, that allow the birds to express natural behavior.

The two groups met in the middle: HSUS was pushing for a complete ban on cages, and United Egg Producers has been trying to boost its image after secretly-taped footage showing sub-par farm conditions went public, and last year’s egg-related salmonella outbreaks. Also, now that individual states are passing differing hen welfare laws, it’s becoming more appealing to egg producers to have a single federal law to follow.

Note that this is just an agreement to work together to try to get a federal hen protection law created; and if the law is enacted, its timeline for full adoption is a whopping 18 years. There are still possible roadblocks: buy-in from UEP members is required; other livestock groups may fight the law to protect their own industries from regulation; and even if the law makes it to Congress, it may not pass. But the first step in changing a situation is awareness that the situation needs to change, and by partnering with HSUS, the UEP has admitted that it is aware that its chickens should be treated more humanely. And hopefully the commotion around this effort will increase consumer awareness of the plight of other factory farm animals, in addition to laying hens. Sure, they are baby steps, but at least they are steps forward!

Scrambling the egg debate

How can we not write about an article that uses the words “scramble” and “egg” in the title?

Animal rights groups disagree, scramble to define ‘humane’ in egg debate

Oregon just passed a law requiring laying hens to be moved out of battery cages and into colony cages, with perches, scratching pads, and nesting boxes, by 2026. Some animal rights groups argue that the law should have eliminated cages completely, but proponents of colony cages claim that hens prefer to live with a smaller group where they know each other and have a pecking order.

 

Egg label primer

We at Haute Pasture do not often buy commercially-produced eggs, so while recently browsing the egg section of our local grocery, we were intrigued by a “certified humanely raised” label on an egg carton. Does that actually mean anything? We didn’t know, and maybe some of you don’t, so here is our egg label primer.

(First we went to the source, the USDA website. It is impossible to navigate. So the following information is compiled from various sites, listed below. These labels are only lightly regulated, mostly by 3rd parties, and are complied with on a voluntary basis.)

Cheat Sheet

Which labels explicitly prohibit beak cutting?

  • Animal Welfare Approved

Which labels explicitly prohibit forced molting? (Forced molting is the starving of hens to trigger an increase in egg production)

  • American Humane Certified
  • Animal Welfare Approved
  • Certified Humane
  • Food Alliance Certified
  • United Egg Producers Certified

Which labels require hens to have outdoor access? (Note that the amount and quality of outdoor access required is generally undefined, except for as noted below.)

  • Animal Welfare Approved (Continuous outdoor perching is required)
  • Certified Naturally Grown
  • Certified Organic
  • Free Range/Free Roaming
  • Pasture-Raised

Which labels require farms to allow hens to act like chickens (i.e., perch, nest, and dust bathe)?

  • Animal Welfare Approved
  • Certified Humane
  • Certified Naturally Grown
  • Food Alliance Certified (but outdoor access can be substituted with natural daylight)
  • Pasture-Raised

Which labels sound humane but allow for the cramming of hens into tiny spaces?

  • American Humane Certified
  • Natural (this label has no requirements for the welfare of the hens)
  • Omega-3 Enriched (this label has no requirements for the welfare of the hens)
  • United Egg Producers Certified
  • Vegetarian-Fed (this label has no requirements for the welfare of the hens)

The Labels

Animal Welfare Approved: Unfortunately, no producers currently adhere to these, the toughest restrictions regarding the welfare of the hens. The hens live naturally: they are able to nest, perch, dust bathe, and molt. Their living quarters must follow requirements regarding population density and nesting boxes. Beak cutting and forced molting are prohibited.

Pasture-Raised: The hens are raised outdoors, on grass, in movable structures. They are fed an organic diet, and are able to forage for the critters which are natural sources of food for chickens.

American Grassfed: This applies less to poultry than to ruminants whose natural diet is grass. American Grassfed certified meat generally means the animal was raised on a diet consisting of only grass and its mother’s milk. The rules are a bit different for poultry, as a grass-only diet isn’t natural for birds, so grass only needs to be a portion of what they eat. Specific standards are not available online at this time.

Certified Naturally Grown: Animals must be primarily pasture-raised, eating pesticide- and medicine-free food. They put an emphasis on locally-sourced food, so don’t require that feed be certified organic.

Certified Humane: The standards dictate that the hens get free access to vegetarian food and fresh water, and they may only be fed antibiotics if medically required. Forced molting is prohibited. Rules dictate space, air quality, and lighting requirements. The hens may stretch their wings and dust bathe. Outdoor access is not required.

Certified Organic: The hens are cage-free indoors, with required access to the outdoors. The amount and quality of that outdoor access is undefined, however. Beak cutting and forced molting are allowed. The hens’ diet must be organic and vegetarian, and pesticide- and antibiotic-free.

Food Alliance Certified: Hens are cage-free and must be able to nest, perch, and dust bathe, and have outdoor access OR natural daylight. Forced molting is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed. Rules govern space per hen, perching, and nesting boxes.

Free-Range/Free-Roaming: There is no standard definition of free-range in the egg industry. The hens are generally cage-free and have some outdoor access; however, the doors may be small and the window of opportunity to go outside may be so short that the hens never actually get outdoors. There are no dietary restrictions for free-range egg-producing hens. Beak cutting and forced molting are permitted.

Cage-Free: This simply means the hens are not kept in cages, nothing more. While the hens may move around and stretch their wings, beak cutting and forced molting are permitted.

American Humane Certified: Descriptions of rules are vague for this label, and their standards documents are unreadable. They certify caged environments, cage-free, and free-range. Some sources claim that this certification allows hens to be stuffed in cages, where they can’t spread their wings. However, the Massachusetts SPCA endorses the certification, saying the hens must be cage-free. Forced molting is prohibited, but debeaking is allowed.

United Egg Producers Certified: This standard allows hens to be stuffed into a tiny space in a cage, where they cannot spread their wings, perch, or nest. Forced molting is prohibited, but debeaking is allowed. From the Humane Society’s website:

The United Egg Producers is a trade group that represents egg factory farms and promotes the confinement of hens in cages. Although the UEP certifies cage-free facilities, it mostly certifies factory farms that cage birds—an abuse that some top egg-producing states have made illegal and are phasing out, and that consumers and numerous major companies oppose.

Fertile: The hens lived with roosters, which means they were probably cage-free. There are otherwise no restrictions for this label.

Vegetarian-Fed: This label only relates to the diet of the hens. The hens are fed a diet that contains no animal byproducts, except for eggs.

Omega-3 Enriched: This label only relates to the diet of the hens. These hens are fed a supplement, such as flax seed, to increase their Omega-3 intake.

Sources: The Humane Society, CertifiedHumane.org, Humane Food Labels, Cage Free Eggs, American Humane Certified article in Natural News, MSPCA, American Grassfed, Certified Naturally Grown, EggIndustry.com, Eat Wild

How farms should be: Polyface, Inc.

You may have heard of the Salatins and Polyface Farms from the farm’s feature in Omnivore’s Dilemma. Building their family farm from scratch, the Salatins formed strong principles regarding how a farm should treat both its denizens and customers. They believe that the earth and animals should be respected, so they allow the livestock free-range access to foods that they would naturally eat in the wild, and they compost and encourage healthy soil. They also respect customers, and do not ship food in order to give consumers the freshest possible food, and therefore the best possible experience.

All animals, including chickens, cows, turkeys, rabbits, and pigs, at Polyface are allowed to eat as much grass as they’d like. Cows are moved to new grazing areas daily, and chickens roll in behind them to enjoy the newly-cropped grass. As the chickens graze and scratch, they break up the manure, cleansing the ground. Pigs root through the fermenting hay and corn bedding in the cows’ shed, aerating it, and turning it into rich compost that is used around the farm. Poultry birds’ diets are supplemented with local grain, and the rabbits are specially bred to thrive on a roughage-only diet.

To get the best sense for how Polyface operates, visit the farm for a special tour, and if you live in the area, be sure to patronize restaurants that purchase Polyface products.