The chicken or the egg?

The entire time I have been here I have always purchased 'frigående höns' eggs since they come from  'free range chickens'. In hindsight it is amusing for me to laugh at how good I thought I was at locating the free range egg products from the caged egg products and there is a very good explanation for this - Sweden does not stock eggs from caged hens.

I had a quick look into this and it turns out that Sweden banned conventional caged hens in the 80's and over sixty percent of chickens here are (apparently!) housed in barns. The forty or so percent that are not in barns are in enriched and not conventional cages - meaning, they have (allegedly) more room than in those horrible caged cells.

I think I need to do a bit more research on this topic because the actual definition of 'free range' may be somewhat different to my understanding of it - i.e. the hens may not be wandering around on a farm pecking at worms and insects. More on that later lest I attempt veganism again.

On a similar note - while I was buying chicken meat I noticed there were pictures of people on the packages. I have since learnt that the smiling faces are of the farmers who own the chicken farm, so not only do you know where the chicken came from but you know who brought it to you, as seen in the example to the right.