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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

How does cage free make this worse? The supply shortages are coming from avian flu in every report I have heard.

It increases the cost of egg production which shifts the supply curve left raising the market clearing price. If it were cheaper then all egg producers would be doing it.

Well, that'd depend on the law's definition of a cage but it's a hell of a lot easier to protect chickens that are fully enclosed vs those that are free range.

This is a very wrong interpretation of a cage. Cages are matrices of 3 cubic foot volumes with a few pieces of wire separating them. All but the top row are toilets.

Edit: the toilet thing is what I've seen for transport in open-trucks. For most of their lives they're just crammed horizontally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_cage

That's true when you're talking about foxes and wolves, but not if you're talking about an airborne flu.

Rows of adjacent cages keeping groups of chickens in close proximity with each other with shared air.

Many cage free chickens are also free range chickens, where they can roam outside. That massively increases their chances of picking up the bird flu, as opposed to those they are inside all day.

I'm not advocating for one or the other, just explaining. Even cage free chickens will come into close enough proximity where they will all die if just one chicken picks up the flu. It's incredibly virulent.

> That massively increases their chances of picking up the bird flu, as opposed to those they are inside all day

Are they getting bird flu at a higher frequency?

I'm in a turkey producing area - one of the largest in the country. What helped massively in 2015 was to simply put fine netting over the windows to the turkey barns, keeping other birds and at least some of their excrement out.

This is from Australia, but whatever:

"In Australia, indoor and free-range poultry, are at risk of contracting avian influenza due direct and indirect contact with waterfowl who may carry avian influenza virus in their nasal and eye discharge or faeces, farming and biosecurity practices.

Indoor (barn or shed) systems limit poultry from direct exposure to wild birds, but these are not immune to avian influenza risks due to indirect contact. This is because equipment, vehicles and human movements between farms can introduce the virus indoors, in particular when on-farm dams or open water sources act as a permanent residence for waterfowl.

Birds with outdoor access (free range) are at risk of coming into direct or indirect contact with wild waterfowl. Vegetated range areas may attract waterfowl, in particular if poultry are given feed or water outdoors. In free-range production systems, producers should therefore focus on managing these systems to reduce the risk of avian influenza."

https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-is-the-risk-of-f...

You really, really need to be citing your sources. You have been bouncing back and forth between sounding authoritative and making assumptions or asking questions (or just being plain wrong).

I'm in a major turkey producing area and my wife worked for a national turkey producing company for 10 years. In 2015 it was all anyone heard about around here for months.

Granted, I don't know much about chickens, but a lot of this is common sense. I'm not sure what you think I'm wrong about.

Yes that's true they can roam outside, but roaming outside does not massively increase their chance of picking up bird flu.

For the same reason that the main guidance during COVID was "be outside if with other people" and not "stay inside if with other people".

Typical cage-free chickens are almost as cramped, they're just not (cruelly) confined to a cage. They're still sharing the same air. If one bird gets it in either situation the whole flock will need to be culled, as they're all going to die (more painfully) regardless.

Caged vs cage free chickens are getting bird flu at about the same rate though, so this claim doesn’t really add up. It’s not like the caged chickens are in hermetically sealed chambers their whole lives, they’re shoulder to shoulder with some wire between them.

Could be that normally this wouldn't have caused much shortage or price increase, but that in conjunction with avian flu it escalated.

It's another requirement to comply with. More work for the producer == higher cost for the consumer.

But the claim is that the shortage has been made worse by cage free laws. Any higher cost from cage free laws would already have been part of the price.

I'm saying the prices are what's been made worse. But suppliers haven't converted over so that doesn't help the shortage.

When California’s anti animal cruelty measure went into effect the price difference was negligible.

Thus stuff is not related, wild to see people trying to conflate it.

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