Post #69 Hire a Hall / Everything (The "Environmental" Egg)

A new brand of egg has appeared on the shelves in my local Woolworths. It's retailed under the brand name "Wattle Ridge" and has the slogan "The Environmental Egg" printed below the brand name. Thereafter follows this:

When you buy these eggs you are buying a completely renewable resource, in a completely biodegradable, environmentally sound pack. You are also contributing towards a massive tree planting program in an arid area (14,000 trees so far), recycled water through our water treatment plant and a recycling program second to none that turns the chicken's waste into valuable compost to fertilise the trees and add vital nutients to depleted soils. And, as you will notice, the pack also bears the Egg Corp Assured (ECA) mark of quality assurance.

So buy the egg that isn't just good for you, but good for the planet.
To learn more see inside lid or visit www.wattleridge.com.au

The material inside the lid offers you a chance to win "a year's worth of green electricity". Just send in two barcodes from their packages in an envelope with your contact details on the back. Send as many envelopes/entries as you please.

The clanger is that these are cage eggs. In order to do all this ecological good, thousands of chookslaves, incarcerated in cages the size of shoeboxes, are frantically squeezing out "the environmental egg" for their masters' profit. I don't know whether the idea is to make the best they can of a bad job, to assuage their consciences, or whether it's just a sop to the potential consumer. I suspect the latter. Cage eggs have been getting a beating lately in the media and this is a mighty good marketing move. So, of course, I wouldn't buy these eggs, would I? Hell I wouldn't! Mighty fine eggs they are too! 12 with a gross weight of 700 grammes. I'd like it better if they fed and watered their forest from the effluvia of free range chooks, but there ya go. (Now I've blogged it out of my system and had a chance to reflect on how cruel those cages are, I think I'll stick to free-range eggs in future - forest or no forest.)