Eggs and Cage -Free Hens and Dirt

The Washington Post runs an article  on caged and cage-free hens, tied in with the salmonella problem. It's accompanied by a photo, which I don't see on the website, showing hens in a row of nests. The photo called up memories, and thoughts.  (Here's a link to a similar photo, found through Google Images.)  The article said currently cage-free eggs are about twice the cost of cage eggs, and even with mass production the cost differential would still be 25 percent more.

Some points for anyone who didn't have a close association with hens growing up:

• cages permit total control over the hen.  You can use conveyor belts to bring grain to the hen, pipe in water to the waterer, and allow the eggs to roll into another conveyor belt.  The manure drops through the cage bottom  Presto: eggs untouched by human hands.
• cage-free hens who lay eggs in nests, as in the picture, are an entirely different matter. Someone has to collect the eggs from the nests.  Because eggs are laid throughout the day, although more heavily in the early hours of the day, the eggs need to be collected multiple times a day.  Why not just once?  Because eggs are fragile; the more eggs you have in a nest the more likely the next egg laid is going to drop on an egg already in the nest and one or both eggs get cracked.  That's bad for several reasons: you've lost one or two eggs; if the break is bad enough the white of the egg gets out and spreads over any other uncracked eggs in the nest, you've now got dirty eggs which are hard to clean; finally, if a hen tries pecking at the white/egg and finds it good, which they do, you're training a hen to peck at eggs to get the contents.
• even if you collect the eggs often enough to avoid breakage, you face another problem not found in cages: manure.  Hens are not naturally fastidious and will defecate in their nests.  That means some percentage of the eggs collected have manure clinging to them, sometimes really staining the shell.  So after the eggs are collected you need to clean the eggs.  Growing up cleaning eggs was my mother's job, which she did manually.  Could take 90 minutes or so to do 900 eggs.  If she was sick, we could use an early egg cleaning machine, which was faster than I or my father.

So the bottom line is cage free eggs require a lot more labor than eggs from caged hens. I'd assume these days there are innovations which we didn't have 60 years ago, but I think the labor accounts for the difference.

One final note: if you look at the photo, you'll see someone who is collecting eggs will have to lift the hens in the nest to see if they're sitting on eggs already laid.  Now hens vary in their personality; some are timid, some aggressive in protecting the eggs, and some are from hell.  The latter ones will grab a fold of skin on the back of your hand in their beak and pull and twist.  Not a nice feeling.  I still feel the anger from 60 years ago. 

Sentence of Sept 7

"People who thought that we could end unnecessary ER visits by expanding access to primary care underestimated the vast reserves of American health paranoia."  From Megan McArdle  Not sure I agree with the implications, but it's a good sentence.

Congressional Websites Are Like the Executive Branch's?

Some paragraphs from a critique of Congressional websites (and this)

Incumbents are locked into a website design, and sites that were rated as high quality one year typically dropped the following year, according to the report. Congressional offices also tended not to ask constituents what they want to see on their representatives' or senators' sites. "The problem with most political websites ... is they are producer-focused," said Marc Cooper, associate professor of communication at the University of Southern California.
The sites carry information about elected officials, but they don't provide a way for the constituents to communicate with them, he said. The Web pages also don't offer a lot of incentives to visitors to explore the online information. "They don't have a reason for you to continue to be there as a participant on the site," Cooper said. "Once you get the information, there's nothing left for you to do."
While congressional members often believe their sites are cutting edge, the sites often are not engaging or transparent, he added.

Seems to me the same things could be said of many government websites, particularly those I see at USDA. I'm not sure, though, how much involvement the public really wants with government.

Farm Bill and the Elections

Farm Policy today has some discussion of the 2012 farm bill by Chairman Peterson and the Iowa Farm Bureau. Of course, the results of the November elections will have a big impact on the bill.  The Republicans may find themselves forced to go against their base to carry out some of their promises.  It seems to me the Republicans are usually supportive of farm programs.  If cutting expenditures is the platform they win on in 2010, then they can't simply extend  farm programs in the next farm bill.  We'll see.

Down With Tenured Eggheads

Dan Drezner finds no surge of hostility towards tenured professors.  I thought I'd supply some.  If government bureaucrats are going to be scorned for their job security, so too should those eggheads in ivory towers.

Government's Achievements

No oil slicks around the Statue of Liberty recently.  See this photo  (from early 70's)

It's easy to forget, except sometimes for geezers.

King and Beck--Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch has an op-ed piece in the Times today which I think is consistent with my post here.  There's a process of building a shared mythology which Glenn Beck is participating in by buying into MLK's myth.  Branch, a biographer of King and a friend of Bill Clinton, gives some background to the whole thing.

Surprising Factoid of the Day

From a NY Times book review of a history of the battle of Cannae:

"The battle is unparalleled for its carnage, with more men from a single army killed on that one day, Aug. 2, 216 B.C., than on any other day on any other European battlefield: something like 50,000 Romans died, two and a half times the number of British soldiers who fell on the first day of the Somme."

 There's the observation that each of these man had to be stabbed, hacked or beaten to death.  Makes one think.

So Much for the Mediterranean Diet

Matt Yglesias provides an international comparison of BMI's (body-mass-index) figures.  Greece is right up there, if far from the U.S. measure of amplitude.  Last I looked Greece had a Mediterranean diet. And what's more, they're not on the list of countries with McDonalds

Klein: Better One or Better Two?

Ezra Klein has found a great metaphor for how we should think about politics: the eye exam. Anyone unfortunate enough to have to be fitted with glasses knows the routine: after trying to read the eye chart without glasses, and misreading the "E" as "P", the optometrist inserts a lens in front of your eye, has you read down some lines, then starts the comparison routine, quickly switching between two lenses and asking: "better one or better two?" [Note: Klein uses the ophthalmologist, but optometrist is easier to spell.]

That's mostly how we need to think about many political and social issues.  For example, evaluating teachers.  Is it better not to evaluate or to evaluate by having the principal monitor the class a couple times a year?  Is looking at class test scores better than principal monitoring, or worse?  Is a combo of test scores and monitoring better than either alone.  Is looking at "value-added" scores better than raw scores?  etc. etc.