Big Pete’s solution to buying ‘cage-free’ eggs

It never stops.

I buy the low-fat milk but put half-and-half in my coffee. I buy I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter instead of the real thing. I eat red meat maybe three times a year. Even cheeseburgers are a no-no.

Is that enough?

No. Now I have to buy “cage-free eggs” – CFE – because it means that the chickens have a better life, laying their eggs in a condo in South Thomaston or something. To finance their new lifestyle, these “cage-free” beauties cost like 80 cents more than the eggs from the barrio.

This is all because of Blue Eyes of course. She is the caretaker for the animal kingdom and swears that buying CFE will “make a difference.” What can I say? I look into those blue eyes and just say “Yes, dear.”

To make a difference with me, she buys a lottery ticket every time I purchase the high-pop eggs.

Big Pete is an evil man. He says the way out of this is to buy one package of CFE and simply refill it with the regular old models. “Who would know?” he asks.

I am not alone in my new purchase decision.

The New York Times reported this week that the designer eggs from chickens raised in large, open barns instead of in stacks of small wire cages have become the latest addition to menus at universities, hotel chains such as Omni and cafeterias at companies such as Google. The Whole Foods supermarket chain sells nothing else, naturally, and even Burger King is getting in on the trend.

Supply and demand, baby.

I can just see mooks like me driving a V8, four-wheel-drive monster a half-mile to the supermarket and buying CFE, swearing that he is “making a difference.” Whatever. The demand is up and the CFE are getting harder to find, even for the big boys.

Politically correct honchos like Ben & Jerry’s got plenty of attention last September when it became the first major food manufacturer to announce it would use only CFE that have been certified humane by an inspecting organization. But the company says it will need four years to complete the switch, The Times reported.

“It’s not easy to find all the eggs you’re looking for,” said Rob Michalak, a spokesman for Ben & Jerry’s. “The marketplace is one where the supply needs to increase with the demand.”

You can just imagine a farmer who has been raising chickens for a few generations and what he thinks about CFE. This isn’t a few hens in the barnyard, pecking the dirt. These are thousands of birds, kept in buildings.

The Times reported that most chicken farmers are not ripping out cages and retrofitting their barns. They question whether the birds are really better off, saying that keeping thousands of hens in tight quarters on the floor of a building can lead to hunger, disease and cannibalism.

They also say that converting requires time, money and faith that the spike in demand is not just a fad, The Times reported.

“There is a lot of talk about cage-free, but are people actually buying them?” said Gene Gregory, president of the United Egg Producers. “I think the consumer walking into the grocery store sees cage-free, and they cost two or three times more, and they don’t buy them.”

It takes about six months to build a cage-free operation from the ground up, including raising the chicks, said John Brunnquell, who owns Egg Innovations, based in Port Washington, Wis. The cost for a well-designed facility is about $30 a bird. Building a conventional operation with the stacks of cages known as “batteries” costs about $8 a bird, he said.

I can’t believe it. Not $30 a bird.

Now Blue Eyes tells me that CFE are not enough. They now have to have “certified humane” on the package.

I say take the Big Pete solution. Buy some “certified humane, cage-free eggs” packages and fill them with whatever you have.

Who is going to know?

As long as Blue Eyes is happy and I keep getting my lottery tickets.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.