Thanks To Factory Farming, Backyard Eggs Are Still A Better Choice Than Store-Bought Ones

Backyard chickens raised for eggs and meat have been linked to an outbreak of salmonella, according to a recent story published by NPR. But though the outbreak was the largest ever to stem from contact with live poultry, it isn’t reason for people to abandon their outdoor flocks out of fear of illness.

The story cited a news brief from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported that between March 1 and September 24 last year, 195 people in 27 different states were infected with strains of salmonella, and 79 percent of them had been in contact with live poultry in the week before they became ill. But the story doesn’t note that the number pales in comparison to salmonella outbreaks linked to factory-farmed eggs and poultry. In one CDC study, the agency estimates there were more than 182,000 cases of egg-caused salmonella in the U.S. — including 70 deaths — in 2000. In 2010, more than 1,900 people contracted salmonella in an outbreak linked to Iowa egg farms that produced more than 2.3 million dozen eggs a week. And just last month, 124 people were sickened with salmonella in an outbreak linked to Foster Farms chicken.

These high numbers of salmonella cases from eggs and poultry are linked to the effects of factory farming. Chickens raised for meat are crammed tightly into warehouses that hold as many as 20,000 chickens, while the chickens raised for eggs live in sheds that can hold 100,000 birds and are often packed in battery cages with five to 10 other birds. Factory farms often contain huge amounts of feces and fecal dust produced by the birds, along with rat droppings and flies, and certain strains of salmonella can pass to the chicken if their food comes in contact with the fecal matter. In order to try to stem off the flow of disease within their flocks, farmers regularly feed the poultry antibiotics, which can lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella: in 2011, 107 people were sickened and one killed from an antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella in turkey.

Raising backyard chickens, without the help of antibiotics, provides no risk of developing antibiotic-resistant strains of disease, and is also a way of avoiding the health risks and cruelty associated with factory farms. The practice could decrease the risk of egg-bourne salmonella: one study found cage-free poultry facilities had about 40 percent less risk of harboring salmonella. Eggs from chickens allowed to eat grass and bugs can be healthier too, containing a third less cholesterol, twice as much omega-3 fatty acids and seven times more beta-carotene.

The NPR article states the outbreak from live poultry was traced back to a single hatchery in Ohio, and quotes the CDC in saying the best way to reduce risk of salmonella through live poultry contact is to wash your hands and clean equipment used to raise poultry. There are risks involved with raising animals for food — and backyard chickens are no exception — but in this case, the benefits of home-raised eggs outweigh any the risk of disease.

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Keystone: Exporting Canadian Oil Across America’s Backyard

Cross-posted from Huffington Post

Given the relentless “all of the above” energy strategy pursued by the Obama Administration, the release this past Friday of a positive environmental impact report for the proposed Keystone oil pipeline was no big surprise. The U.S. State Department essentially declared that since the extra-dirty tar sands oil designated for the pipeline was going to be shipped and burned one way or another, building the pipeline down from Canada to Gulf coast refineries would not have that much impact on the environment — despite warnings from climate scientists that burning all the tar sands oil would be “game over” in the fight to stop climate change.

This conclusion by the State Department was a laughable bit of self-fulfilling logic. But perhaps the biggest surprise in the report was the tacit admission that the tar sands oil isn’t going to be burned in the U.S. at all. Instead, it is destined for refining and export overseas.

The State Department report details how Gulf Coast oil refineries will use the tar sands crude oil delivered by Keystone to replace supplies from Venezuela and Mexico, refine the crude into high-end products like gasoline, and then export the refined fuel overseas. Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, fuel prices paid by U.S. consumers in the Midwest are expected to jump as the pipeline will siphon off crude oil supplies that are currently landlocked in America. The U.S. State Department did not, of course, highlight these findings at the top of its report but instead buried them down in the “market analysis” section, where it left a clear trail of breadcrumbs.

Interestingly, the State Department went way out of its way to argue that the pipeline won’t be used to export unprocessed crude oil. (Though the industry clearly expects otherwise: see here.) Yet at the same time, the State Department admits, using painstakingly disconnected phrasing, that the crude oil delivered by the pipeline will be processed by Gulf coast refineries and then exported, in a shell game whereby export refineries replace declining crude oil supplies from Venezuela and Mexico with Keystone Canadian tar sands oil.

Regarding the pipeline’s impact on the export of refined crude, the State Department report says: “…future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.”

And what exactly are those trends? The State Department reports that: “In 2005, exports began increasing… Export volumes have increased to over [3 million barrels of oil per day] in the first half of 2012. This increased volume of refined products is being exported by refiners as they respond to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.”

And why use the extra dirty crude oil to be delivered by the Keystone Pipeline? The State Department says: “Gulf Coast refiners’ traditional sources of heavy crudes, particularly Mexico and Venezuela, are declining and are expected to continue to decline. This results in an outlook where the refiners have significant incentive to obtain heavy crude from the oil sands.”

And there you have it, a shell game, with Keystone as the lynchpin for the whole effort. Gas prices go up for Midwesterners, big oil refineries profit from the overseas export of fuel processed from dirty tar sands oil, and the rest of us are that much further in the hole in our fight to stop climate change. The environmental impact statement appears to be a clear signal that the Obama Administration is headed down the road to approval. However, the growing backlash against the pipeline creates a headache for the president who just made a very public commitment to protect the climate. A fight is clearly in the works.

– Hunter Cutting is a consultant and writer.

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