Of Eggs and Hens

When I said goodbye to my little flock and had to resort to getting my eggs cold from the supermarket cooler instead of warm from the nest, I made sure to choose cartons that said that the hens who laid those eggs were “free-range” or, at the very least, “cage-free.” 

Temple Grandin, that patron saint of farm animals, writes that battery hens are the most mistreated of all livestock. The suffering of cattle in feedlots is nothing compared to the misery of hens imprisoned in tight individual cages, deprived of natural light and food, forced to lay without regard for seasonal rhythms, and slaughtered after a couple of years. 

There was a time in my life when I made mayonnaise from scratch, in the blender, with garlic and olive oil, and eggs from my own lovelies. But when I was reduced to buying it at the store, I forgot to think about the hens whose eggs were used in its manufacture. Then one day, reading labels, I found mayonnaise made with eggs from cage-free hens, from the biggest producer on the planet, Hellmann’s. 

Not that cage-free hens lead an idyllic life. They don’t run around on grass, peck at bugs, or preen their feathers in the sun. They spend their lives in huge rooms filled with hundreds of their peers, making the most horrific din. Still, it’s far better than those cages. 

I bought the jar of Hellmann’s and took it home. It tasted like ordinary mayo, but I felt better as I spread it on my bread. Then, on my next trip to the store, I saw a new product on the shelf, a mayonnaise dressing from the same manufacturer that, the label said, was made with olive oil. 

I am a devotee of olive oil. As a child, one of my favorite foods was “pa amb oli i xocolata,” the all-time Catalan after-school snack: a thick slice of crusty bread sprinkled with dark, aromatic olive oil, accompanied with a chunk of almost-bitter chocolate. (If you’ve never tried it, it beats Hershey’s by a mile.) 

When the AMA discovered the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, olive oil ranked first on its list of panaceas. A powerful antioxidant, the oil is supposed to be good for the heart, the brain, the gut, and the immune system. It fights infection, lessens the risk of strokes and certain cancers, combats pain and inflammation, helps prevent diabetes and, because it keeps blood sugar levels stable, may help you lose weight. Not surprisingly, it’s even good for your mood. 

I was in the kitchen putting away the olive oil mayo when I realized that I hadn’t checked whether its eggs also came from cage-free hens. What if I had bought mayonnaise that was good for me but bad for the hens? 

The days are long gone when one could go to the store and choose stuff based on whether it looked good and how much it cost. I had barely mastered the secrets of tuna casserole when I learned that most of the foods available in the supermarket were bursting with possibly lethal substances. The first culprit, identified in the 1970s, was salt (would give you heart attacks), followed in the 1980s by fat (ditto, plus you would look awful), followed by sugar (pure poison, and ubiquitous), followed by hormones (would give you breasts if you were a man, cancer if you were a woman), pesticides, and the growing awareness of what our food system was doing to the welfare of animals. 

Trips to the supermarket became exercises in defensive warfare against industrial farming, food conglomerates, and big business, all of whom were bent on doing me maximum harm for their maximum profit. And now here I was in the kitchen, holding my jar of Hellmann’s, about to face a moral choice between the welfare of millions of hens and my own. 

But like Abraham about to sacrifice his son at God’s command, I was spared the dreadful choice. A close look at the label informed me that all Hellmann’s mayonnaises are made exclusively with, as they put it, “cage-free eggs.” 

After a year when good news has been scarcer than, well, hen’s teeth, I clutched the Hellmann’s jar to my breast. Could it really be that one of America’s major food producers had both my welfare and that of the female chicken at heart? Alternatively, could it be that consumer pressure had inspired Hellmann’s move to use olive oil, and eggs from cage-free birds? 

Whatever the reason—and I suspect it’s #2—it gives me hope. Maybe the next target for us consumers could be the bull calves that are born each year to keep their mothers lactating.  Heaven knows I sympathize with the plight of dairy farmers, but the sight every spring of farms with dozens of calves in rows of individual “calf igloos” may well drive me to veganism. In a nation that sends robots to Mars, surely there is a way we can have our cheese and eat it, with a clear conscience.

Dining With Mrs. Beaton

We're having leftovers tonight--boeuf bourguignon (which improves with age) for him, salmon quiche (which doesn't) pour moi, with a fresh salad from the garden. This gives me leisure to revisit Mrs. Beeton's Book Of Household Management, which I bought twenty years ago in a facsimile 1861 edition, for $4,99.

Isabella Beeton was something of a phenomenon, or would be, these days. She was married at nineteen, the eldest of twenty-one children, to a magazine publisher whose business she practically ran (all this information is from the jacket copy). She had four children and died after the last birth, at age twenty-eight.

Her book is a compendium of everything you'd want to know about Victorian life, from advice on how to keep your man at home to the first set of recipes that include exact measurements and cooking times.

One of my favorites is the instructions on how to carve a dish called "Calf's Head":

"This is not altogether the most easy-looking dish to carve when it is put before a carver for the first time; there is not much real difficulty in the operation, however, when the head has been attentively examined, and, after the manner of a phrenologist, you get to know its bumps, good and bad. In the first place, inserting the knife quite down to the bone, cut slices in the direction 1 to 2 [here I am omitting the illustration of the calf head]; with each of these should be helped a piece of what is called the throat sweetbread, cut in the direction of from 3 to 4. The eye, and the flesh round, are favorite morsels with many, and should be given to those at the table who are known to be the greatest connoisseurs. The jawbone being removed, there will then be found some nice lean; and the palate, which is reckoned by some a tit-bit, lies under the head. On a separate dish there is always served the tongue and brains, and each guest should be asked to take some of these."

One week of this, the kind of fare that affluent Victorians fattened on, would make me model-thin. But at least our forefathers knew what they fed on--the head on the platter was hard to ignore--whereas I've never set eyes on the slowly pasturing boeuf or the swift-swimming salmon that we will enjoy tonight.

The Little Calves

I see them no matter what direction I take whenever I leave the house: the calf hutches aligned close to the road, next to the big cow barns. A calf hutch is a plastic structure the size of a very large dog house, with a big opening on one end, and a little gizmo on the side to hold a large nursing bottle. Each hutch has its own pen, made of sturdy wire attached to the front of the hutch. The pen is about the same size as the hutch.

Every few months, as I drive by, there is a new batch of little calves in the hutches. Fresh from the womb, they sparkle in the sun, their white spots spotless, their black spots almost an iridescent blue. Their bodies are short, their legs long, and made for running. They stand in their little pens and their big eyes watch me drive by. In cold weather, the calves wear little coats.

As the weeks go by, the calves grow bigger in their pens, less cute, and dirtier. Their white spots are smeared with manure, their black spots look dull. Then one day I drive by and all the pens are empty.

I know that until I am ready to give up not only meat, but cheese and eggs as well, I will be supporting an industry that kills 50% of its infants--the cockerels and bull calves that don't lay eggs or give milk. I also know that the farms I drive by are family farms struggling to survive under increasing burdens of high taxes, low milk prices, and federal and state regulations.

Some day perhaps science will come up with a way to ensure that eggs contain only female embryos, and that dairy animals give birth to females only. Until that day, however, I hope that we can at least strive to give the males destined for slaughter a decent quality of life.

I once visited a dairy farm near one of Vermont's ski resorts. It was small--fewer than 200 cows--and run if not on strict organic principles, in as natural and humane a way as possible. The farmer, who also happens to be a premier cheese maker, told me that, whereas in a "regular" dairy operation cows are spent by their fourth birthday, his cows produce milk until they are thirteen or fourteen years old.

But what about the calves, I asked? There, he said, he was experimenting with "baby beef." The reason that veal calves are confined in hutches and pens is that if they eat grass or hay their flesh loses that prized whiteness. They are kept on a milk-only diet and slaughtered at eight weeks, the age at which they can no longer survive on milk alone. Calves destined for baby beef, on the other hand, can eat grass and hay, and thus need not be confined. Their meat is not pale white veal, but is nevertheless tender and flavorful.

The farmer took me to see his calves. Because it was winter, they were inside the barn, but would go out on pasture, he said, in the spring. There in a roomy pen, bedded in abundant hay, were five or six calves of different ages, as well as a couple of sheep. It was cold inside the barn, and the calves were asleep snuggled together, like a litter of puppies. It was, despite the chill, a heart-warming scene.

I don't know how that farmer's experiment with baby beef turned out. I did read some months later that his cow barn had gone up in flames, and all the neighbors had gotten together and built him a new one. I should check up on him one of these days, and see if he is still in business.