Eggs. We all (well, ok, most) eat them, love them and find them as a staple of our diets. So we've taken some time to compile a (somewhat) spread out list of Alberta Egg Producers who view a holistic and natural way of chicken brooding, raising and laying.
Why? We have a growing concern for egg production. The thousands of birds who sit their entire lives inside a cage or barn, without sunlight and in cramped conditions. These birds also endure massive antibiotics and injury due to these close quarters.
We wish to promote the smaller farmers who use free range, free run and organic methods of egg production - because not only are the eggs better for you, the lives of the chickens are the primary focus instead of how many eggs they'll produce.
We contacted Egg.ab.ca to get some information on what being CFIA certified means, and why there aren't more of these farms around;
"The way the egg industry operates across Canada, is that individual egg farmers sell their egg to graders (they operate the CFIA-certified grading stations), who then clean, grade, package and sell the eggs to grocery stores and restaurants. In Alberta, most eggs are graded by Burnbrae or Sparks Eggs. All free-range or organic eggs would be from one of those graders, or provided by them to the grocery stores for their private label eggs.
At the end of 2015, about 2.4% of eggs laid in Alberta were from farms using free-range hen housing. I’m not sure what % of those farms are producing organic eggs (free-range housing is a requirement for organic eggs, along with the requirement to use only certified-organic feed).
There are basically two reasons why free-range/organic hen housing is not more widely used in Alberta: first, only about 4.5% of eggs sold at grocery stores in Alberta is free-range or organic; second, Alberta’s climate is not ideal for free-range housing (we import the missing 2% of free-range/organic eggs from BC egg farms). Most of the year, when it’s too cold for the birds to be outside, the free-range/organic housing is converted to free-run housing.
Of course, there are some registered egg farms in the province that grade their own eggs and sell direct to consumers, usually at farmers markets. One such farm that produces organic eggs is Sunworks Farms"
-David Webb
