Eggs - a Livestock and Meat commodity

[Sdajii]

PLASTIC ?1?!

our cardboard cartons are likely made from imported wood pulp ( making packaging costs higher )

I'm not sure which is better or worse from an environmental point of view, although Western people have been heavily conditioned to view plastic as evil, if it's a straw anyway, but to ignore it in most contexts. Wood and pulp alternatives are also environmentally harmful. The plastic cartons are good in that you can see the eggs which means you don't have to search through the cartons to find one without broken eggs. The plastic bags they're usually sold in are weird though, you need to be careful when taking them home to avoid breaking any.

Those cardboard trays the eggs are sold in layers of 30 on wouldn't work in plastic.

I once saw an egg truck fully loaded with them crash... hehe, trivial crash for the vehicle but quite a mess!

Anyway, point is, eggs are plentiful and cheap here, no issues, farming practices are not clean etc, and bird flu isn't an issue. It's mysteriously an issue restricted to countries primarily populated by White people, in three separate corners of the world.

 

[Craton]

Is that for fancy ones pretending to be better than the cheap generic ones, or the cheap generic ones?

30 eggs here (they tend to do them in 10, the concept of a dozen isn't a thing here) is about AU$5-7 depending on size. Across the river in Laos they're a bit cheaper. But if you want to buy a fridge or toothbrush or microwave oven etc it'll generally be more expensive than in Australia.

A couple of pictures from my shopping trip at the local market yesterday, I took them while this thread was in my mind. Mostly they're sold in plastic bags, although there are supermarkets which sell them in plastic egg cartons.

Sunrise Eggs "Farm Fresh Eggs" 12 X-Large 700g
We buy whatever-the-brand when we can as supplies in our neck of the woods are not always available.

 

[Mr Flibble]

.... and bird flu isn't an issue. It's mysteriously an issue restricted to countries primarily populated by White people, in three separate corners of the world.

I'm gonna hazard a guess that the birds are not free range? If you quarantine the chooks from the outside word, then of course bird 'flu isn't gonna be an issue.

 

[Sdajii]

I'm gonna hazard a guess that the birds are not free range? If you quarantine the chooks from the outside word, then of course bird 'flu isn't gonna be an issue.

It's an interesting facet of the situation and worth looking at. Incidentally, it's a good reason to advocate for battery vs free range farming.

Within a single country, the risk of bird flu being introduced is about 2-6 times higher in a free range farm than a cage farm. I can't find solid data, but I'd bet that the cases where it's most different (closer to 6x higher the risk) would be countries like Australia where the outdoor situation is harder to control and they do a good job of quarantining the indoor cage farms (if you know anyone in Australia who works on such farms you'll know about how strict they are with people keeping pet birds, keeping clean before going into sheds and between sheds etc). While in third world/poor countries like where I'm based, just about everyone has chickens running around at home and even if they don't, like me, they have all the neighbour's chickens running around the streets, coming into their kitchen pecking for scraps, everyone shops at the local wet market where all sorts of animals dead and alive are on sale, running around, etc, and no one understands let alone bothers with quarantine efforts, yet these places remain absolutely 100% immune to supply or price issues. No one here even knows there is an issue, let alone cares let alone tries to do anything to stop it, and there is no problem, yet every single Western/White country in any corner of the globe is dramatically affected. Given the difference in quarantine effort etc, a cage farm in a backwater third world country should be at far higher risk than any farm in Australia, or even if you want to completely ignore different standards between countries, the problem here should be at least half or so as bad as Australia, but here there is no problem at all. According to the official story, bird flu is 90-100% fatal to the birds in a flock, it spreads very effectively in cage farms, and there is no effective quarantine between sheds here, and they're not doing mass culls, so the egg industry here 'should' have completely been wiped out by now.

If there was something of a trend, there was some amount of correlation on a spectrum, sure, I'd think battery vs cage is likely to be a big part of it, perhaps even the main issue, but it's very close to an all or nothing issue, even though cage vs battery methods themselves are on a spectrum, the highest profile case of egg shortages, the USA, primarily uses cage farming (and even their 'free range' eggs are mostly indoors but not in individual cages as opposed to running around outside). But the numbers don't seem to add up.

If your idea is correct, we could simply solve the entire problem immediately by switching back to cage eggs, which incidentally is not a night and day difference in animal welfare, it's an apples and oranges deal. Animal welfare lobby groups have to push for the less economic option because otherwise they can't justify their existence - you are redundant of you push for what industry wants to do anyway. If you've ever been to cage and free range egg farms you'll see that in terms of welfare they both have pros and cons. Given an apples and oranges welfare situation I'd go for the one which is most efficient - better for prices, better for the environment, and if it's safer from a disease perspective that's also better in all respects including animal welfare.

Edited to add a picture of the eggs I bought from the wet market yesterday. I went for chicken rather than the usual duck eggs because I haven't won the tipping contest recently and my budget didn't allow for duck :'( But weirdly, in plastic bags like this is how most people here buy their eggs, or in the cardboard crate things if they buy 30 or more at a time.

In Australia (15+ years ago) I used to think of eggs as a cheap form of food, and 10 years ago in Asia I didn't eat them too often because compared to other foods they were expensive - barely cheaper than Australian prices but other foods were dirt cheap. Some other foods here have about doubled since then (due largely to inflation) and eggs are now a more budget friendly option relative to alternatives.

 

[divs4ever]

I'm gonna hazard a guess that the birds are not free range? If you quarantine the chooks from the outside word, then of course bird 'flu isn't gonna be an issue.

that seems to be the case , small flocks seem to be unaffected ( or the eggs never get to market so are never tested ,) and cooking SHOULD neutralize the virus , ( and the odd 'suddenly dead ' hen ends up as dinner for the farm dog or cat )

 

[Sdajii]

that seems to be the case , small flocks seem to be unaffected ( or the eggs never get to market so are never tested ,) and cooking SHOULD neutralize the virus , ( and the odd 'suddenly dead ' hen ends up as dinner for the farm dog or cat )

This goes against the official narrative. Cooking will 110% kill the virus. Any virus at all including the most heat resistant will be killed before being heated to boiling temperature, and bird flu isn't heat resistant. Most viruses are knocked out by temperatures much above normal body temperature, which is the main reason our bodies heat up (fever) in response to viral infection - many viruses like flu can't cope with it as well as we can, so we can cook the virus out of ourselves without killing ourselves.

It's not normal for flu to be shed into eggs anyway so you could eat them raw without any risk worth being concerned over - you pretty much need direct contact with an infected bird, or something it was in direct contact with immediately before you were, not an egg which had to be collected, packaged, distributed, sat on a shelf, sold, etc.

Even the official story doesn't say bird flu is a relevant risk to humans who buy infected birds or eggs to eat from the supermarket, the issue (according to the narrative) is that the virus will wipe out the flock and before it does, infect other birds, so the entire flock must be exterminated to prevent the spread (to other chicken flocks).

It's quite reminiscent of the Wuhan virus which was going to kill everyone but then only killed the elderly and everyone who caught it just felt somewhere between mildly ill and nasty flu, unless they were on their death bed with cancer, in a car accident or 94 years old, in which case the covid tragically took their lives and is solely responsible for preventing them going on to live forever in prosperity.

It's almost like the dangers of viruses are massively hyped up and if you ignore the propaganda you don't have a problem, and the same people spreading the propaganda make massive amounts of money if people believe it, both directly from the sale of vaccines, and indirectly from any health issues caused by them. It's almost like the medical industry makes more money the more unhealthy people are, and like any system it has a tendency to do what benefits itself...

But as for the bird flu, there is zero doubt that egg production has not been impacted in countries making no effort to deal with it, nowhere has anyone recorded a case of a human catching bird flu from an egg, and there are proposals for mass vaccination of domestic chickens which would make incredible money for pharmaceutical companies.

There are some details of the picture which are unclear, but you don't need to bother joining any dots to see the big picture at this point, just wake up, open your eyes and take a look.

 

[divs4ever]

This goes against the official narrative. Cooking will 110% kill the virus. Any virus at all including the most heat resistant will be killed before being heated to boiling temperature, and bird flu isn't heat resistant. Most viruses are knocked out by temperatures much above normal body temperature, which is the main reason our bodies heat up (fever) in response to viral infection - many viruses like flu can't cope with it as well as we can, so we can cook the virus out of ourselves without killing ourselves.

It's not normal for flu to be shed into eggs anyway so you could eat them raw without any risk worth being concerned over - you pretty much need direct contact with an infected bird, or something it was in direct contact with immediately before you were, not an egg which had to be collected, packaged, distributed, sat on a shelf, sold, etc.

Even the official story doesn't say bird flu is a relevant risk to humans who buy infected birds or eggs to eat from the supermarket, the issue (according to the narrative) is that the virus will wipe out the flock and before it does, infect other birds, so the entire flock must be exterminated to prevent the spread (to other chicken flocks).

It's quite reminiscent of the Wuhan virus which was going to kill everyone but then only killed the elderly and everyone who caught it just felt somewhere between mildly ill and nasty flu, unless they were on their death bed with cancer, in a car accident or 94 years old, in which case the covid tragically took their lives and is solely responsible for preventing them going on to live forever in prosperity.

It's almost like the dangers of viruses are massively hyped up and if you ignore the propaganda you don't have a problem, and the same people spreading the propaganda make massive amounts of money if people believe it, both directly from the sale of vaccines, and indirectly from any health issues caused by them. It's almost like the medical industry makes more money the more unhealthy people are, and like any system it has a tendency to do what benefits itself...

But as for the bird flu, there is zero doubt that egg production has not been impacted in countries making no effort to deal with it, nowhere has anyone recorded a case of a human catching bird flu from an egg, and there are proposals for mass vaccination of domestic chickens which would make incredible money for pharmaceutical companies.

There are some details of the picture which are unclear, but you don't need to bother joining any dots to see the big picture at this point, just wake up, open your eyes and take a look.

it will be interesting to see how they vaccinate against a respiratory virus this time on birds to boot !

i wonder if we get to read the press releases on these safety trials

 

[Sdajii]

it will be interesting to see how they vaccinate against a respiratory virus this time on birds to boot !

i wonder if we get to read the press releases on these safety trials

It will be more ridiculous than last time, but chickens won’t complain and since humans won’t be getting jabbed, even the ones who see what's going on won’t generally care much anyway.

Given the recent nonsense, another mass vaccine rollout on humans would either have extremely low voluntary takeup or if it was compulsory or "voluntary" in the same way the last one was (people I know in this region all knew people who were dying within hours of their covid vaccines and were terrified but took them anyway because they were even more terrified of the government - there was something seriously wrong with the vaccines used out here), there would be absolutely massive opposition this time. Even a large proportion of the people still saying they trust the covid vaccines would say 'I think I might just sit this one out' if another one was to be pushed on them. So, the next boogeyman impacts chickens instead and they can make their fortune manufacturing vaccines for fully obedient chickens, tolerated by apathetic taxpayers.

Not to brag, but I'm eating six eggs most days now

 

[divs4ever]

It will be more ridiculous than last time, but chickens won’t complain and since humans won’t be getting jabbed, even the ones who see what's going on won’t generally care much anyway.

you are an optimist ... of course it will spread to humans , they will have a PCR test to prove it , and the symptoms will be almost like the seasonal flu ( except the unusual death rate , because they died WITH a positive test ) .... maybe Peter Dutton will spread it on a commercial flight just like he did last time

( but it won't be allowed to stop the elections ... will it ? )

maybe i should watch for the dip and buy extra PFP ( like i bought them in December 2020 @ $3.00 )

and Australia will be touting it's new vaccine facility pumping out jabs for the masses

it MIGHT be more ridiculous , but ridiculous sold heaps last time

 

[Sdajii]

you are an optimist ... of course it will spread to humans , they will have a PCR test to prove it , and the symptoms will be almost like the seasonal flu ( except the unusual death rate , because they died WITH a positive test ) .... maybe Peter Dutton will spread it on a commercial flight just like he did last time

( but it won't be allowed to stop the elections ... will it ? )

maybe i should watch for the dip and buy extra PFP ( like i bought them in December 2020 @ $3.00 )

and Australia will be touting it's new vaccine facility pumping out jabs for the masses

it MIGHT be more ridiculous , but ridiculous sold heaps last time

You raise some valid concerns, er, you have some appropriate and no doubt correct insights into the pending disaster and fully appropriate response to it.

But in all seriousness, I do think it is unlikely there will be much of a push to say it is a human health risk. Maybe a small amount to encourage the low fruit to go for it, the idiots up to their 8th covid boosters who still wear a mask and yearn for more lockdowns, but for fear of backlash I doubt they'll push hard. Then again, in early 2020 I would not have believed they would try to cause such economic and personal devastation over a slightly overblown cold, or that most people would be so willing to comply with obvious insanity, and it did take me about a year to reset my expectations to something more realistic after continually thinking it would develop in a less insame way than it did, so it does seem I am prone to erring on the side of giving the public more credit than they deserve, and the government with less assumption of evil and incompetence than they deserve (not to belittle how incredibly evil I know they are).

When it comes to the government, sure, they'll try anything, they're ruthless and in some cases are incredibly stupid, but even if the public is too stupid to have really learned all that much, I think they'll be less willing to cooperate than last time, and the ones who were not fooled last time will be far quicker to take far more resistive action the second time, with some individuals with chips on their shoulders from last time like to go full blown extreme if anything similar happens again. Many people lost their businesses, families and more last time - people who have lost everything and have nothing more to lose are very prone to taking drastic action against anyone working against them. People who lost everything and have since built up something which they now stand to lose are prone to being extreme in their willingness to defend what they have. Provoking people repeatedly brings out more of a reaction, and last time towards the end enough people were fighting back to end the situation. A lot of people saw that and will be easily rallied if it happens again.

But, yes, I overestimated how much resistance there would be last time and perhaps I'm out with my estimate of what would (will?) happen in a similar situation in the not too distant future. I'm absolutely sure that there would be a significantly stronger public resistance than last time though, even if less than I expect.