A&W TV media advertising new egg source.

[TLC2014RN]

Every time I see the ad, I have multiple questions: Why doesn't A&W show the farms the eggs come from? There is no mention of the type of chicken farming? Are the chicken in mass farms where the chicken never gets outside? Are the chickens in a farm that provides more humane environment where the chickens are let outside? Or, are the chickens on a free range farm? It is not just A&W hiding the farms, there is an advertisement on that talks about how much things have changed, but eggs are still eggs? That could be a Freudian sip. Many chicken farmers do not see the benefits of changing their farming practice & continue to raise chickens in small cages stacked row on row, where the chickens never leave the cage EVER. Until they are killed! There is the farmers who raise their chickens in mass farm/chicken copes where the smell of urine/feces is layers deep & the air is toxic from the amount of ammonia and they are so crowded that some chickens have deformed feet, or feet with open sores due to lack or space to move & lack of clean ground to stand on. Some farms do not provide and levels of perches, no grass or clean ground to peck & scratch. So the next time you go to buy eggs, look for FREE RANGE on the lable. This is the same for the chicken you buy. Look at how small the legs are. These chickens have not had any opportunity to move to develop the leg muscles. FREE RANGE chickens take longer to reach adult weight, they have exposure to grass, sun, space to run around, and you will pay more. But ask yourself: have these chickens & the eggs they produce, been raised with a Vegetarian Diet while they were kept in tiny cages or mass farms where the farmer never provided adequate space & expose to outside environments? OR Where the CHICKENS & their EGGS farmed on FREE RANGE farms?
For more details check out the videos of Jamie Oliver's investigation into chicken farming in England a few years ago because you will rethink what you buy, where you buy it & the amount you are prepared to pay. Talk to your store manager, ask for more variety of free range produce. Rethink shopping at big box stores, they can give a lower cost because the farmers were are to raise their chickens faster. Look to source your chickens and eggs from local sources! Good luck eating @ A&W!

[AllisWD45]

What are your thoughts on the A&W beef ads

[kato]

A&W is capitalizing on the trendiness of saying their chickens are fed a vegetarian diet. That's all. Nothing else. It's a marketing angle.

Chickens are not vegetarians. Especially free range chickens. Free range birds eat bugs and worms like chickens are supposed to eat. The two claims are incompatable. My chickens caught a frog yesterday. It was a bad day to be a frog.

The chicken you eat have small legs for two reasons. One... Frying chickens are only about six weeks old. Two... They have been bred to be so calm and lazy in order to grow fast, that they just basically sit around. These birds are so lazy that they don't even stand up to eat. They just plop down at the feeder and stuff their beaks. Waterers have to be placed away from the feeders just to get them to move.

Unlike cows, who spend their lives out in the fresh air, walking around and eating grass.....

[TLC2014RN]

Kato: great comments. What a joke "Vegetarian Diet"! So they don't get fed a diet that contains byproducts from other animals! I take exception on one idea: I believe that there is no such thing as a "Lazy" chicken, only chickens living in restricted environments. Take those chickens & provide open air & space to move & they will more (provided their feet have not been deformed or compromised with festering painful open sores from toxic ground space). Chickens kept in cages never move. They may not be able to move due to underdeveloped leg muscles. cheers.

[grassfarmer]

You need to get your terminology right before debating this. "Free range" does not necessarily mean running about outside. Free range designation in Canada means indoor raised, running loose, but with no requirement for more space per bird than a caged system, no perches, no laying boxes for hens.
There are a lot of big scale direct marketers selling "free range" chickens/eggs that are raised indoors on Hutterite colonies for them. How about targeting these fraudsters? Seems everybody is out to get A@W instead.

[kato]

There are lazy chickens, but they are the meat birds. I raised some Giant Cornish chickens which are the standard meat breed. They had a coop, with a little door and a ramp going outside to a fenced yard we built just for them. We also had some young layers in there. The layers were all over that yard, running around and having fun all summer. The Cornish, however, were lucky if they even looked out the door. Not one of them ever set foot out the door all summer. Not one. Lazy slugs, every one of them.

The layers are another story. I can't even imagine putting mine in cages. They would make better poster chickens for A&W. They kind of missed the mark in their chicken promotion, imho. With the steroid free beef, I think they could have done a little more research and found a better angle too, maybe even one that included the description Canadian in there.

[smcgrath76]

The beef issue is a bit of a catch 22. A&W advertises hormone free beef. Canadians can't supply. Farmers/ranchers get mad, because it is apparent that there is a ready supply, particularly in the hamburger trade that would add value to cull cows/bulls/heiferettes, etc.
Reality in Canada is that A&W cannot reliably use this source of beef as there is no documentation available on these cattle for them to back up their claims if it were ever challenged. There are some hormone free/documented feeder cattle programs such as Spring Creek and these are used as the face of the program but they can't possibly supply the demand at this stage.
I think A&W has done a good job of marketing, for which they should be applauded. I think as producers we need to really think about which markets we want and how to get them, but I am pretty sure that won't happen until the price drops again.
The chicken one is interesting and I am a bit surprised they went there, but when you think it through the claim looks good with the public while have very limited impact on their available supply. Again a good marketing angle, with little cost on the supply side.

[Happytrails]

Sean I wonder what documentation there is for the aussie beef? I guess if you are killing cattle that haven't seen a human in their life and were rounded up by helicopter they probably haven't been implanted. But who knows? I think we just got out hustled. And likely undercut on price.

Last week out of curiosity I had an A&W uncle burger and a MacDonalds angus burger. The angus burger won that taste test hands down. Yeah CANADA!

[kato]

When you think about it, most burger is from cows & bulls, right? Who would implant a cow or bull? Why? I've never seen it done. I would think that using cow and bull beef would pretty much mean there were no implants used.

It seems we're getting all the downsides of traceability, with none of the potential benefits. When that changes, there will likely be less resistance from producers. So far we are paying all the bills, while having no share of the premiums.

That's what needs to be fixed.

[grassfarmer]

We don't have a traceability program kato, remember we gave up on implementing that a while back?

[kato]

From what I've been reading, it hasn't gone away yet.... There are still plans

[grassfarmer]

It's one of those things that needs to be decided one way or the other. We either pursue a working program or we don't. Seems pointless to me to incur some of the costs (CCIA, ranchers buying tags) and have nothing to show for it.

If we commit to a system then we could attempt to capture value from that but it is unrealistic to expect the market to reward us with premiums now to encourage us to at some point in the future to maybe implement a traceability program.

[smcgrath76]

Kato, I agree somewhat, but I also know folks that estrumate every cow with hormones prior to breeding season, folks that AI using CIDRs and multi-shot protocols, etc.
Without tracability and market segregation, the general cattle population in the commodity beef business can't readily service a "hormone free" market.
I also think that being undercut on price is a reality of the program as well.

[Happytrails]

Sean you are well versed on our offending practices although I could point out that only a tiny portion of our kill cows have them in their background.

To restate my question, what documentation do the aussies have? My understanding that the outback is NOT populated with millions of ID'd cattle. Their traceability starts when their (the cattle) lives end. If I'm wrong straighten me out. Propaganda won't cut it tho.

Our ID tag system is useless by design. All of the very limited information associated with a tag is a CCIA secret not to be shared. If I want to know who tagged a cow, sorry we can't tell you. If I want to know who reported it last, sorry can't tell you. Useless by design.

Beyond that it is almost completely redundant. You can run a cow in and scan the tag. Voila, it is cow #99. I can see that. Virtually all the pertinent information concerning cow 99 is available by examining her physically and researching her recent history. That would include how she got to the present location. Sources for that information would be her owner, sales records and LIS. If they would, CCIA could tell you who tagged her and when they reported she was born. The latter info is iffy. A pretty incidental contribution not worthy of the bother IMO.

Sorry for the rant. I wish cattle people a good fall for marketing, weaning, shipping, processing and not for quite a while, feeding.

[grassfarmer]

HT here is a quote from the New South Wales Gov website re the National Livestock ID system:

"NLIS Cattle was introduced in NSW on 1 July 2004 and involves electronic identification of cattle and centralised recording of movements on a national database. NLIS Cattle uses approved NLIS ear devices or rumen boluses and reporting all movements of cattle between properties with different Property Identification Codes (PICs)."

The website is
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/nlis