And I'm and Welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Goodreau from Compassionate Cooks.

I founded compassionate cooks to empower people to make informed food choices and to

debunkments about vegetarianism and animal rights.

You can learn more about who we are and what we do by

visiting our website compassionate cooks.com.

Once people learn about the treatment of egg-laying hens, their next thought,

their next question is usually, well what about

free-range eggs? I'll just buy free-range eggs since the hens aren't harmed or confined.

It's a reasonable leap to make. Nobody wants to contribute to the suffering of another.

And I think our intentions are really good when we seek out foods labeled free range or cage-free or cruelty-free, the problem is that though these phrases

evoke images of happy animals who actually have control over their own lives and their own bodies, they don't necessarily

reflect reality.

And if we truly want to be informed and conscious consumers, we owe it to the animals to learn about this reality

to learn the truth and we owe it to ourselves too so we can be sure that our own values

aren't being compromised whenever we make any purchasing decision.

So in response to the question, what about free-range eggs?

Here are my thoughts.

Contrary to what most people believe, the term free range, especially in the case

of birds, doesn't really tell you anything about the animal's quality of life, nor does

it even ensure that the animal actually goes outdoors.

Most people don't know that.

So you see, free-range chicken eggs

...