A year ago I made peace with my libertarian nature and endorsed passage of the Egg Bill (“Will Congress ride in to rescue egg producers?”), the legislation based on the hen welfare agreement between the United Egg Producers and the Humane Society of the United States. Efforts to enact this legislation as an amendment to the Egg Products Inspection Act as part of the 2013 Farm Bill failed, at least partly because a new Farm Bill was never passed. A somewhat revised new Egg Bill (H.R. 1731, S. 820) has been introduced into the 113th Congress (see Egg Bill proponents try again on Capitol Hillin this issue for details). If the Egg Bill passes this year, the one-year delay will actually benefit egg producers.
The new Egg Bill has some improvements over the original version. Proposition 2 was not negotiated away, but the newly revised transitional period for California egg producers is better than the original. The egg industry didn’t get exactly what it wanted here, but the ability to keep hens in conventional cages at 116 square inches per bird allows for a gradual transition.
The impact of an occasional temporary ammonia reading of over 25 parts per million in the layer house is clarified in the new Egg Bill. Egg producers will want to do everything they can to maintain ammonia below 25 parts per million in the air in the layer barn, but if this level is exceeded temporarily it doesn’t mean they can’t sell their eggs.
Egg producers who had houses under construction before the welfare agreement was announced but were not in production before December 31, 2012, are left in kind of a tough situation based on the language of both versions of the Egg Bill. These new houses were financed based on the expectation of housing hens at 67 square inches per hen, but the owners of these facilities will be required to start reducing cage density long before the houses are paid for. The language of the Egg Bill pertaining to eggs sold in California may provide the solution for owners of “new” houses. If these houses are enrichable, the owners of these houses could install the enrichments and house birds at 116 square inches and sell the eggs in California. This way they won’t be competing against eggs produced in cages with 67 square inches per hen.
