News for the Egg Industry Worldwide
August 2007/Volume 112 Number 8
House Farm Bill Spurns Animal Rights’ Pleaders,
but Keeps Encouraging Ethanol 1
Industry News 4
Health, Marketing Stimulate Interest in Yolk Color 5
Performance Benchmarking Boosts Profitability 8
AEB to Promote Health Benefits, Versatility of Eggs 10
Emerging Egg Technology 13
Marketplace 14
www.wattpoultry.com
House Farm Bill Spurns Animal Rights’ Pleaders,
but Keeps Encouraging Ethanol
By James C. Webster
For egg producers, there’s good news
and bad news in the House Agriculture Committee’s farm bill.
What’s positive for poultry and livestock producers is the absence of stringent new animal rights provisions sought
by increasingly vocal activist groups.
Negative or mixed: its continued
encouragement of ethanol production
from corn.
Although the committee’s July 17-19
bill-writing session is just the first step
in a long legislative process to complete
a new five- or six-year farm bill later this
year, it sets the tone for what Congress
likely will produce.
Even during preliminary subcommittee meetings, efforts by animal rights
activists to include new European-style
regulations in the 2007 farm bill failed
to get traction. But they have not let up
and are expected to try again when the
full House takes up the bill.
The Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS) – which proclaims a goal
of ending battery cage egg production—
wants an amendment that would bar federal agencies from buying food produced
under “industrial farming practices.”
But neither the subcommittee draft
nor the “chairman’s mark” used as the
basis for committee decisions included
new animal agriculture standards.
Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, who
chairs the subcommittee on livestock,
dairy and poultry, said recently that
producers already “are vigorously ad-
dressing animal welfare issues” without
additional federal standards and that
consumers are driving stricter animal-raising standards.
Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., the subcommittee’s senior Republican, said that
producers, rather than activists, should
determine animal husbandry practices.
“Passing legislation based solely on emotion goes against the committee’s responsibility to use science and best management practices that are designed to improve animal welfare practices,” he said.
United Egg Producers (UEP) President Gene Gregory told Boswell’s subcommittee in May that animal care is “a
subject that lends itself to emotion, unsubstantiated allegations and extremist
tactics.” He said it is difficult to “know
where concern for animal welfare ends
and opposition to the very existence of
animal agriculture begins.”
Renewable Fuels Boom
Even as they spurn HSUS pleading, the
committee and a large majority of both
houses of Congress this year line up in
strong support of corn growers and etha-
