It Could Happen Here - Cracking the Case on Egg Corruption

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

James looks into the DOJ investigation into egg price fixing and what it can tell us about the way our food system treats animals and people. Sources: https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1450281/dl?inline https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe-unscrambling-the-egg-ma/204490574/  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.978076/gov.uscourts.cacd.978076.77.0.pdf https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/trump-administration-cancels-contract-bird-flu-vaccine-development  https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/02/26/usda-invests-1-billion-combat-avian-flu-and-reduce-egg-prices https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111 https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Poultry/chickegg.php  https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20231204  https://www.dol.gov/index.php/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20240502  https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6248715/1/united-states-v-ramirez/  https://www.versova.com/trillium-farms/  https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndoh/pr/labor-trafficker-sentenced-encouraging-illegal-entry-guatemalan-nationals-including  https://u.osu.edu/osuhtblog/2018/03/02/failed-by-the-government-guatemalan-minors-placed-into-custody-of-traffickers/  "See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart.

And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her Podcast.

We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police rode off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% out of it. free with an Iheart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to Iheart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for IHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of

Scam Goddess Podcasts. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana.

Jeremy Colhain. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone.

I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Detective said he had stalked her before she died. Years later, they said he remained the person they continued to focus on. This is Hunter Gilmore, host of Hunting for Answers, a True Crime podcast, shedding light on the silent epidemic of missing and murdered black women and girls, bringing attention to stories that equally deserve to be told and to the questions that still remain.

Listen to Hunting for Answers A True Crime Podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All Zone Media. A few weeks ago, I was rudely awoken in the middle of the night by a terrible squawking. Ran outside my house to find a young possum, oh possum, if you're an annoying person, had decided to spend the night in my chicken coop. My chickens had woken up and somehow backed it into a corner where it was frozen in fear with its mouth open, trying to look too scary to eat.

In the middle of the night, in my pyjamas, I had to pull it out of the coop and then set it out of the chickens area and chew it off. Every morning I feed my chickens from a barrel of treats I keep on my deck. I take their layers, pellets and water. Chickens need a pretty specific protein percentage in their diets to lay eggs. They also need some grit and some calcium. It also provide them with seedy roms, which are fun toys for them, take care of their medical needs, and of course to clean out their coop regularly.

In return, my four girls lay me two to three eggs a day, an amount that varies by season and by their age. I have two Americana crosses, chickens that were bred to keep the colourful egg gene of the Chilean Araucana, but to remove its genetic tendency to produce chicks who would die in the shell. These chickens lay colourful eggs. My other two girls of Rhode Island Reds who lay brown eggs. I've had chickens for most of my life.

As a child, we had a much bigger coop in a part of a field with a big fenced-in-run where the chickens could run around. We buried the wire fence to keep foxes out. When my cousins were smaller, I remember thinking it was very funny that they would go into the chicken coop using the chicken-sized door. I used to love going to livestock markets as a kid, and I still sometimes do when I get the chance.

I like the shows as well, where you can steal the breeds of chicken how different they are. I'd always beg my parents to let me save up my pocket money to buy some kind of exotic poultry. I like having chickens in part because it just feels like part of living for me. But also because I think it's really important to remember where our food comes from, which is to say that all food comes from the soil, the sun, the sea, and from things that turn those things into something we can eat. Lots of our food, in this country, comes from animals. And it can be very easy to forget that if your food comes in boxes,

and packages. Every chicken has a personality, and every egg comes from a chicken with a unique and different way of being. I think most of the eggs I've eaten in my life come from a chicken that I also fed and cared for. For a long time, I didn't eat eggs because my chickens didn't lay them. I didn't really want to buy them and not know where they came from. I'm very lucky in that regard, and it's not something that everyone else has the opportunity to do. I have a place where my chickens can live, I have time and little money to feed and care for them, and I guess uncomfortable around animals and knowing that I can take care of them. Most people who eat eggs have a more transactional relationship.

They go to a shop and swipe their credit card and they get a box of eggs. The box makes a series of claims that can be hard to verify. And the eggs all look the same. Some people prefer to go to a market, meet the person who looks after chickens, get their eggs from them. They pay a little bit more for that. Over the past few years, the cost of this transaction has somehow become a topic of national political concern. Eggs. I'm getting the eggs. Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control. Price of eggs in the US has reached record highs recently. A dozen cost about $5 on average in January.

Now Elon Musk has taken aim at the previous administration. There was an insane slaughter of 150 million egg-laying chickens ordered by the Biden administration. He posted. If you cast your mind back to early 2025, before you'd heard of Gregory Bovino and before Mike Lee had begun his pathetic attempt to sell off a public land by inserting his bullshit little riders into big bills. The price of eggs was a big deal. In large part, this was due to an avian influenza outbreak and the resulting culls of flocks that were not invented by or unique to the Biden administration. Obviously, if you have fewer chickens, you're not going to get as many eggs. As winter approaches, health experts are raising new concerns about a resurgence of bird flu. New York's governor shutting down live poultry markets for one week over growing concerns of

bird flus. The virus is HPAI, highly pathogenic avian influenza, first detected in 1996, decimating wild bird populations, then spreading into the world's food supply. And the longer this virus persists, the more species it persists in. So we don't know what's going to happen. The spread of bird flu and livestock is hitting consumers in their wallets with egg prices soaring. The high prices were also sustained by giant egg corporations, acting like a giant egg cartel. Now, we can talk about how we should manage infectious diseases like ably and flu in our animals. And I'd like to at some point because the culling approach was used in the UK when I was a child

and seeing whole herds of cattle killed out for BSE was a massive trauma for rural people. And one I think is often forgotten or brushed off with far too little concern today. But today, I want to talk about eggs, their prices, and what that means for human and animal welfare. In March of 2025, as Elon Musk, the world's most divorced man, was ripping apart the federal government with a group of poorly socialised tweens that he'd hired. The DOJ sent notice to several major egg producers that they were required to preserve documents as part of an investigation by the antitrust division into egg price fixing. Specifically, as a DOJ would later claim in a civil lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Iowa, the egg producers were conspiring to inflate the daily price quotations of Erna Barry, a market reporting company, in order to bump up the wholesale price of eggs.

Let's take a step aside from the fact that this seems to undercut Trump's repeated claim that somehow Joe Biden was personally responsible for a much-bemoaned $5 a dozen eggs and look into what it tells us about where our food comes from, when three giant corporations, Calmain Foods, Vesova Holdings and Hickman's Egg Ranch, can buddy up and run an oligopolistic egg cartel. I got pretty deep into this DOJ complaint in preparation for this episode, but to understand it, I think you probably have to back out a little bit first, understand a little bit about the egg industry.

The DOJ breaks it down by saying, quote, eggs are produced by egg producers. That is a weird way of saying chickens. But I think that styling point tells us a lot about the capitalization of our food chain. Fundamentally, in America, the eggs come from the egg factory, and it just so happens the chickens are one of the inputs that go into the factory to make the eggs come out. Now, some of these big producers do not have enough eggs on hand to supply all of their orders, so they have to buy more eggs on an exchange.

Think this as kind of eBay for eggs. The biggest egg exchange is egg clearinghouse, Inc. It was set up in the 1970s as a way to bring the world. wonders of a free market to the output of our poultry. When it was set up, its board included the founder of Cal Main, the largest egg-producing company in the US. The idea was that a national market would stabilize egg prices, help buyers find sellers, and ensure that the market cleared through a blind bidding process in which egg buyers only find out who they are buying eggs from after they have completed the transaction. In a Boston Globe piece, titled, quote,

unscrambling the egg market across the US, very funny, very punny headline, published in 1978 and written by Daniel J. Corkoran, we get a sense of what this looked like in the 1970s. Raymond F. Delano was the general manager of ECI and ran the operation from his basement in Durham, North Carolina, along with his digital equipment core computer with four GASP video display terminals. Now, in addition to being on some Thunderbird shit,

Raymond also changed how the quality of eggs was determined. Previously, they were graded, large, extra large, medium, etc. And the number of each size in a case was determined. But old Ray came up with a new idea, weighing them. Later in the process, the eggs are graded by size at the wholesaler and placed in retail packaging. Throughout this process, Raymond there at Mission Control never sees an egg or a chicken. He just sees his four gasp video display terminals.

The idea here is pretty classic 1970s shit, right? More information, easier comparison, more buy-y, and more sellers, a perfect market that should clear at the national clearing point. It's a stuff you learn in Economics 101 before they spend the next three years teaching you excuses for why it never works like that. Erner Barry takes anonymized data from this exchange and produces an aggregate daily price quote based on region and size. Erner Barry gets information for direct trades that occur outside of ECI.

Those earner Barry numbers are, in turn, used to determine the prices paid in contracts for large egg companies that they have with retailers or restaurants. The complaint goes on to detail how. From 2022 to 2025, the three giant egg companies conspired to submit a large number of bids, often in the hours leading up to earn a Barry publishing a price quotation, and many of which they knew would not be successful. If you're old enough to remember bidding up something your buddy was selling on eBay, this is a very analogous behavior, don't you love capitalism?

I'm talking of how great capitalism is. It's time for a commercial. break. This record is on. Miley is having a moment. New name. Closive shows. So IHart Radio is sending you to experience it all. Life at the Hollywood pole.

Flites, hotel, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Listen to IHard new music for 10 minutes a day on the IHart Radio app. And click enter. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Stream Miley's new album, Base Persuades, today. I'm Melissa. Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her podcast, were kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police rode off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought

it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an IHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to IHart. Heart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts, search for IHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast.

It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today.

Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could. do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight.

Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcasts, the True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamorne Morris, and Nicole Byer. Ooh, I scammed them. What?

I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents. Tell your parents to stop clicking on links, please.

And now you can catch. full episodes of my show on YouTube. If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you, and I'm also here to laugh with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy, and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the

IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Scamp! Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast were each week a new

panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore.

Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore.

14. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as Wonder Pope gets up.

to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, Big Egg might be good at extracting the most money from consumers, but as it turns out, they really suck a crime. Here's one example, quote, Hickman's CEO repeated his request early the following morning on December 20th, emailing senior executive from Cal Main, Versaver and others stating, quote, Please consider posting strong bids early and often. The market reporters don't get in for another hour, so it would be good for them to see diverse bidding upon logging on.

Lina Barry is more likely to increase its price quotations if it observes higher bids from a variety of market participants. Hickman's CEO later emailed again, stating, quote, Hurry, there are only 16 bids on ECI right now on 15 of the morars. Shortly after that email, all three defendants collectively submitted dozens of bids on ECI, most of which were at premium prices. Another choice quote from their emails,

quote, as a group, we need to bid like they vote in Chicago, early and often. Amazing stuff, we have created machine politics for eggs. Having conspired and created an enormous paper trail linking their texts and emails to immediate changes in bidding behavior, the conspirators then change their behavior when the DOJ and more than a dozen state attorneys general came knocking.

At the same time, the Trump administration, tried to re-establish the pecking order of egg regulations in a court case in which it argued that the Egg Products Inspection Act preempted California's state laws on the sale and shipment of eggs from hens confined in certain cruel conditions. The drug administration argued that, quote, California has effectively prevented farmers across the country from using a number of agricultural production methods

which were in widespread use and which helped keep eggs affordable. Are you keeping up here? That's still not Joe Biden, who has, responsible for egg price increases. The California laws in question, if you're wondering, began as 2008 and 2018 ballot initiatives that mandated birds to be given enough space to extend their limbs and move without touching another animal. That 2008 initiative impacted eggs from California farms. It's more or less when you see cage-free eggs everywhere now. A decade later, Prop 12 gave new minimum size requirements,

one square foot and prohibited the sale of battery eggs from other states in California. Battery eggs, if you're not familiar, the ones produce under the most intense and cruel conditions. The Trump administration didn't stick the landing on that one, but they hadn't put all their eggs in one basket. At the same time they began this court case, Elon Musk, a man whose own children hate him, began tearing apart the very apparatus that would normally respond to an outbreak of avian influenza. So instead of dealing with an outbreak that had by that point already killed someone and mutated into a disease also impacting cattle, people at these federal agencies had to beg someone with massive Reddit mod energy to let them keep their job.

The Trump admin cancelled a contract with Moderna for an avian flu vaccine in humans in May of 2025 and announced a five-prong strategy to combat avian flu that included deregulation biosecurity, looking into a vaccine for birds and exploring import options. Vaccination comes with a vaccine. an acceptance that the condition is endemic, and that can create export concerns, which why has historically not been the choice. But this is all part of the Trump administration's war on what were now $6 boxes of eggs. I used a handy tool on the St. Louis Fed's website to graph egg prices against a consumer price index. I am not someone who likes studies or cares about

economics, or indeed graphs, but I'm pretty sure I determine that eggs went up in price more than inflation did over the last decade or so. with spikes in 2015, 2024 and 2025. Egg production fluctuates less, peaking 113 billion, and dropping to 105 billion in 2025. The market is not a perfect reflection of supply and demand. It is a thing that can, as we have seen, be manipulated by corporate interests. But I think looking at these graphs and statistics can rather obscure what's going on here. At some point, long before old Ray fired up his four screens and started selling eggs by mass. Eggs went from being a thing that your chickens laid or your friend's chickens laid

to a massive commodity. It's easy to forget when our presidential candidates are arguing about egg prices, when I'm fairly sure that neither of those candidates hadn't been to a grocery store this millennium, that each of these eggs is laid by a chicken that had a whole life, and that often that whole life can be spent without seeing the sun. The way we get cheap eggs is maximising efficiency. Here we are back with economics 101 ship. Limiting inputs are. maximizing outputs, limiting cost and maximizing revenue. What this means is cramming the most chickens into the smaller space and trying to get the most possible out of them in terms of eggs. That's just the economics of it. But at a scale such as this, it's a purely economic question.

And I don't think it should be. I don't think we should see this just in terms of agricultural production methods, as the Trump administration called them. But also in terms of ethical obligations to other living creatures. Eggs don't come from a box or a store or a factory. They come from a chicken. Chickens in the way we know them now have been selectively bred for so many generations that their lives and ours are intertwined. If we let all the horrifically treated battery chickens out tomorrow, things wouldn't end well for them. That doesn't mean they don't have the right to be treated with some basic dignity and decency though. So IHart Radio is sending you to experience it all.

Life at the Hollywood Polites, hotel, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Listen to IHart New Music for 10 minutes a day on the IHart Radio app and click enter. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Stream Miley's new album, Bass Persuades, today. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge.

You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an Iheart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to IHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for IHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi.

We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Iwano. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild.

I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight.

Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care.

I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week, I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa, Debrie, Lamorne Morris, and Nicole By. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job.

And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents. Tell your parents to stop clicking on links, please. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you. And I'm also here to last.

with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers.

What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists.

Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday, and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark Thirteen. No way.

You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.

You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been around animals, raised for food and eaten my whole life. When I was little, we had sheep and we ate lamb. When I got a bit older, I spent a lot of my time on my own and with my dad, shooting rabbits and pigeons. We ate plenty of those as well.

In my travels around the world, I've eaten all kinds of stuff. In the jungle with the embalah, I ate the eggs that came from their chickens that ran around the common areas of town. And when my host suffered it, I ate chicken too. I think there's a fundamental difference between eating animals and acknowledging that they were, until very recently, sentient beings, and arguing about the price of animal food products in a way that totally ignores the thousands of lives are going to be impacted by that conversation. We could substitute any number of products for eggs here, but eggs are the one that somehow

entered the presidential election cycle in 2024, and which were being pumped up by the megacorporations that they were the latest cryptocurrency, and I just don't think that's how we should relate to our food. Upton Sinclair would have said that he'd aimed at the public's heart and somehow hit their stomach. And that's somewhat like how I feel about this issue. Where there's abuse of animals, there is often abuse of people too. I don't want to bombard you with horror stories of exactly what happens on a battery chicken farm. Because you're probably driving to work in the morning right now.

Chickens are kept in conditions which are inhumane. They don't see the sun and they're cooped up so tightly that many have their beaks trimmed so they can't attack each other. think anyone who has raised animals or been around them a lot knows that they can suffer and that in these conditions they do suffer but so do people in 2023 the DOJ prosecuted a poultry processor the exclusive poultry ink a supplier to Ralph's Ali grocery outlet and Cisco

for child labour abuses and wage theft the company's children as young as 14 to debone chicken and drive heavy machinery in 2017 a DOJ prosecution for labour traffic revealed that Trillium farms often employed children who had come to the USA being promised in education and the American dream, and who instead were forced to live in dilapidated trailers and work 12-hour days de-beaking chickens, cleaning their coops, unloading and unloading animals from crates. While they worked these long days, they paid rent for their shitty trailers and tried to pay off the smuggling

fees that brought them to the US. It's a modern-day form of indentured servitude. The person accused of spuggling them, pled guilty. But Trillium Farms, who paid millions of dollars for child labour, well, their parent companies vers sober. Remember the big three egg giants, colluding to hyperinflate prices earlier this episode? That's one of them. Aldo Leopold spoke about a land ethic, in a quotation I read in another episode, and I think we need a food ethic in a similar way. Unless you hunt, fish, grow, gather, or farm your own food, that food comes to you through working people. Sometimes that food also comes from animals. I know it can be hard to make ends meet right now, but I know it's not getting any easier. I know that many of you don't have the space,

time or money to raise chickens and grow vegetables or fish and hunt or whatever. I know that making rent each month is a struggle for so many Americans right now. I also know that while we went through all of that, some giant corporations who totally control our food chain decided to hyperinflate the price of eggs, abuse animals and force children to work in horrible. conditions. A friend once called me an anarcho cottage core lifestyle influencer, and that comment has lived in my head ever since. I don't want to come on here and tell people they all have to go out, buy chickens and have a little garden. People did that when egg prices went up, and I think a lot of those arrangements ended pretty badly for chicken and chicken haver. But I do think we need to seriously

think about how we engage with our food, and the animals that form part of our food chain. right now far too much of the production and safety of our food is in the hands of giant corporations who take advantage of workers, consumers and animals if I eat an egg or better yet if I give an egg to my neighbours I know that egg came from a certain chicken Merrill Peep or Victoria Peckham for example might lay a large or different coloured eggs from another chicken

I know what I fed her and I know she had access to clean water in a safe place to sleep I know that if a coyote tried to hurt her and keep her safe. In an exchange, I have these eggs. Admittedly, it's hard to know of a chicken consented in that exchange. But as eggs go, I'm happy with mine. And I think a world in which everyone knows that eggs came from a happy chicken is a good one. It's also a world fundamentally at odds with the hypercapitalism of our food system right now.

To me, there is something very grounding about having animals around, about the daily routine of caring for them and the little interactions with them. about them coming to trust me a bit more over time and me understanding each of their little unique personalities. I think you can make a case for no animals in agriculture, but at least right now I think the case I want to start with is for a more cooperative understanding of our lives with animals, for seeing them as an end in themselves, not as a means to an end.

I think it's difficult to do that in conjunction with a system where eggs are treated like an electronic exchange, based on raw tonnage, and pumped up in price like the latest meme coin. I think arriving at a more cooperative and kind way of feeding ourselves is difficult. And I don't think I have all the answers to you in the next few minutes. But I think that we all need to reflect on the way we talk about food right now. And the many voices and consideration that are absent from that conversation when they should be centered in it. I hope you've enjoyed another sad episode of my podcast.

I do want to make some of these more fun for you all. And I want to make sure we approach things like skills, equipment and planning for being in the outdoors. I don't want to do that in a shitty listical way. because shitty listicles and content-driven commerce are what killed the ability to have serious conversations about the outdoors in far too many publications. That and VC buyouts and everyone working at those publications

being a wealthy white man in Boulder. But I digress. I'd love to hear from you about questions, concerns, or ideas you have. I don't care if you've never been camping or if you've guided for 40 years. Please reach out. Natural CausesPod at proton.me. That's a proton mail address.

If you want your email to be encrypted, you'll need to send it from a proton mail address too. Thanks. Natural Causes is the production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for natural causes listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Wano. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references,

occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story. A case the police rode off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise.

Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an IHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to IHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts. Search for IHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman. Angel Geratana.

Jeremy Colhain. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween.

He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eye. eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it.

Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational. yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The Scam Goddess! Detective said he had stalked her before she died. Years later, they said

he remained the person they continued to focus on. This is Hunter Gilmore, host of Hunting for Answers, a True Crime podcast, shedding light on the silent epidemic of missing and murdered black women and girls, bringing attention to stories that equally deserve to be told and to the questions that still remain. Listen to Hunting for Answers, a true crime podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.