Nothing prepared for dinner? Boil an egg. Need a nutritious breakfast? Try scrambled egg. No time? Bolt down an egg flip. But as versatile as they may be in the kitchen, there is nothing easy about selecting a carton of eggs.

For the past 30 years the egg has been at the forefront of campaigns by animal welfare activists, concerned about inhumane production. Debates have also raged about the egg’s fat and cholesterol content, pesticide and artificial hormone content and the risk of bacterial contamination.

The good news is that eggs are a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals, including the essential nutrient choline. They are also a source of Omega-3 fatty acids, selenium and folate. They are pretty high in fat (less than a third of that is saturated fat) which is found in the yolk. The white is water and 13 per cent protein.

Breaking ranks: The variety of egg labels can be bewildering. Picture: canoncan

Cholesterol – friend or enemy?

In the 1980s, eggs received a bad rap for their high cholesterol content and were struck off the diets of many deemed at risk of heart problems. More recent research has shown that high cholesterol levels are far more likely to be caused by genetic and lifestyle factors and the consumption of saturated fats than eating cholesterol. Some medicos believe that eating eggs can actually lower cholesterol levels because they’re high in cholesterol but low in saturated fats, which can help shut down the body’s production of cholesterol.

But having decided it’s fine to eat eggs, the consumer still has to negotiate a way through all the cartons on offer, labelled with various claims about sizes, quality, production and nutrition.

And it does not help that some of the labels are meaningless. According to the Australian Egg Corporation, for example, the label “antibiotic-free” means nothing because all industry chickens are free of routinely administered antibiotics. If birds are given antibiotics by a vet, it says, there is a “cooling-off” period so they are unlikely get into the eggs.

The American egg industry says low levels of antibiotics are occasionally, but only rarely, used to prevent disease and ensure the health of laying hens. It says very few antibiotics are permitted and there is an economic incentive not to use them because of the cost. In the UK there has been more evidence of antibiotic residue in eggs from routine use on farms.

Similarly, the label “hormone-free” means nothing because hormones have been banned in poultry production in the developed world since the 1950s. However, many people still claim that eggs contain artificial hormones.

Battery hens top of the hit list

For the most part, though, the labelling refers to the methods of egg production and how the hens are kept, reflecting a widespread and growing public concern for the welfare of chickens, especially battery hens.

Since their introduction in the 1930s in the US, egg producers have regarded battery cages as the most efficient and hygienic way to produce eggs and the vast majority of commercial eggs are still laid by caged birds. Animal welfare activists say hens are kept in large numbers in small cages without the opportunity to walk around or engage natural behaviour such as nesting, dust bathing, perching, and foraging.

Battery hens also tend to suffer from osteoporosis and have bones that break easily. Their productivity is regulated by lighting and carefully measured quantities of protein rich feed, which is sometimes supplemented with colouring agents and medication. Birds often have their beaks cut to stop them pecking each other, and can be induced, by restricting their food, to artificially moult to make them lay more.

Supporters of battery farming contend that alternative systems, such as free-range, are costly and also have welfare problems, such as increases in cannibalism and injurious pecking, worse air quality and no scientifically proven decrease in chicken stress levels.

Nonetheless, many countries in Europe have now banned battery cages altogether and the European Union has ruled that conventional battery cages be phased out by 2012. They are to be replaced with enriched – or furnished – cages that are larger, house fewer birds and have nest boxes, dust baths and a perch.

What’s the alternative to caged eggs?

There is a plethora of labels advertising certification. All mean something slightly different in terms of hen welfare, but in general there are three main alternatives to cage eggs; barn laid, free-range and organic.

Barn laid or cage-free eggs are produced by hens that are loose-housed on litter but have no access to the outdoors. Barn houses also have nest boxes, perches and a dust-bath area and may be single-tiered or multi-tiered.

Free-range (or free roaming) birds are also loose-housed in barns or warehouses and have daily access to the outdoors as well (how much time the hens actually spend outside is also subject to debate, as is the size and quality of the outdoor yard).

The size of the flock and the range of housing is highly variable. Australian regulations stipulate that one metre of space has to be allocated for every 30kg of free-range or barn kept birds. In the UK for eggs to be called free-range, hens must have continuous daytime access to runs which are mainly covered with vegetation and with a maximum stocking density of 2500 birds per hectare. The US has no specific standards for free-range egg production. Both production methods may still employ beak cutting and forced moulting.

Organic egg production is on the rise. But it is not always clear what the label “organic” means so it pays to do your homework. In the UK alone there are 10 different organic certification bodies with varying standards. In general the minimum standards should ensure that birds are kept in free-range conditions with a diet free of pesticides, GMOs, animal-derived products and antibiotics.

In the UK routine debeaking is not allowed, but it is in the US. Some certification authorities allow the use of antibiotics under strict conditions in the case of illness. Some do not allow their use at all. Only natural moulting can occur within the flock. In most organic operations nesting boxes are placed above a belted system so roaming birds lay their eggs on the belts instead of on the ground.

If hens are allowed to genuinely free-range they will not produce vegetarian eggs since they eat insects and worms while scratching around outside. Eggs from pasture-fed hens have more folic acid, vitamin B12, vitamin E and carotenes than grain-fed fowl and will often be a brighter yellow than other eggs (although the absence of artificial colours in the feed can often mean the opposite).

Free to roam: Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver championed chickens' rights. Picture: imageafter

It should have been the year of Chicken’s Lib.

When campaigning TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall embarked on his experiment (Hugh’s Chicken Run) in 2007 to highlight the plight of Britain’s favourite food – the battery hen – he almost started a food revolution.

Hugh ran two farms – one based on common practices in factory farming, the other on organic, free range production of chickens. He introduced a community of previously devoted cheap-as-chips chicken eaters to raise their own free range birds – and eat their charges – converting them to reject factory birds in favour of free range in their local supermarkets.

The nation began to sit up and take notice of something that perhaps they had, up until then, taken for granted; that the short, uncomfortable life of the chicken on their plate was a pretty gruesome affair.

Targeting the big supermarket chains of the UK who sell millions of cheap chickens each year, Hugh did his best to turn around the public’s perception that just because chicken was ubiquitous, didn’t mean that at some stage, the original animal that produced the nugget they ate, or the roast they had on a Sunday, hadn’t had as much right to a worthwhile life as any other animal destined for our plates.

The campaign gained momentum when fellow TV chef, Jamie Oliver, delivered another publicity-grabbing diatribe, attacking factory farming practices in Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, which aired in the UK early this year. There were books too, like food journalist Hattie Ellis’s Planet Chicken, which revealed some horrendous statistics from the US and around the world about our love affair with cheap, who-cares-where-it-comes-from chicken.

Following all this negative publicity about the way they put chicken on their shelves, the big corporations shut down pretty quickly Hugh and Jamie’s attempts to revolutionise a nation’s chicken eating habits. They correctly surmised, that given time, people would forget about their favourite meat’s fate, put from their minds the images of chickens too weak to move, with huge clumps of excrement stuck to their legs, and continue to tuck into meat sourced from battery and factory farms.

According to Jamie and Hugh’s research, the majority of the UK’s chicken come from battery farms which raise 860 million every year. Most factory farms house between 20,000 to 40,000 chickens per shed. Some farmers expect to make as little as 1 to 2 pence per bird, directly affecting their need to pack as many birds as possible into their sheds.

It now takes half the time to raise a bird than it did 30 years ago, thanks to genetic modifications which do not take into account at all the creature’s natural desire to be a bird. They are indoors for their average life of 40 days, without natural light, the period of darkness they’re given may be as little as one hour in 24, so that they are constantly feeding, piling on the pounds so that they will appear plump under their eventual cloak of cellophane on the supermarket shelves.

They can’t move very far, all they can really do is feed and rest and feed and rest, and put on this extraordinary unnatural weight.

By contrast, organic chickens are given time to put on weight, taking up to 70 to 80 days, and have the freedom to do what chickens do naturally – peck, scratch the open ground, and respond to the natural rhythms of the diurnal cycle.

The resulting meat, according to chefs like Hugh and Jamie, is infinitely better. Hugh says that it “appals” him that the amount of free range chicken eaten in the UK is only 2 or 3 per cent, compared with 30 or 40 per cent in France.

The main obstruction to converting the UK – and other nations which see it as a right to consume chicken cheaply every day – is cost. Hattie Ellis charted the evolution of the chicken from once a year treat to everyday commodity in Planet Chicken, the world’s passion for this bird really kicking off in the US where the first efficient factory farms began.

Jamie Oliver has suggestions for those who would like to reinstate the chicken as a premium meat in their household. On his website he points out that “you don’t have to eat chicken every day. In Britain, we eat meat six to seven times a week while many other European nationalities only eat meat three to four times a week”. He also suggests buying the best welfare bird you can afford rather than the cheapest one on the shelf.

It’s a matter of changing your mindset that you must have chicken, just because it’s cheap and available. There are signs that some producers are making changes – albeit slowly – and Hugh’s campaign continues under the banner Chicken Out!, which maintains a level of public  pressure on the big corporations.

However, real change will only occur if every one of us rejects the factory farmed option in favour of free range every time we fancy a slice of chicken on our plates.