During a meeting with students and a member of the Humane League Tuesday night, ASU administration expressed interest in transitioning to providing cage-free eggs in campus dining halls.
The meeting, the third for the University this year, was another preliminary step to making the transition happen.
“(Administration officials) showed interest in making sure ASU stays current by making this change, but they still need to work out logistics,” Humane League Arizona campaign director Ashley Rhinehart said.
A group of ASU students, with help from the Humane League, has spent the last year working toward the use of cage-free eggs in campus dining halls.
The majority of the eggs served in the dining halls come from chickens raised in standard battery cages, according to members of the group Cage-Free ASU.
The average chicken in a cage has only 67 square inches of space, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
These chickens are often crowded into sheds with thousands of other chickens, all stacked on top of each other in wire cages, nonprofit studies graduate student Kirby Mauro said.
Caged factory farm hens make up 90 percent of America’s 280 million hens, according to the Humane Society of the United States. The factory farm system has come under attack from many environmental organizations for being harmful to both chickens and their human consumers.
“Cage-free eggs are more sustainable because these regular battery cage facilities have a really large concentrated amount of feces and other waste products that just pollute the air,” Mauro said.
Rhinehart has been helping ASU students set up meetings with dining hall directors and get the word out about the cage-free campaign to fellow students over the past semester.
Rhinehart said battery cage eggs have been linked to many cases of salmonella, leading to the recalls of millions of eggs.
“It’s a huge waste and many people can get sick or die from salmonella,” she said.
She said cage-free chickens are less stressed and therefore less susceptible to diseases.
Rhinehart and other members of the Humane League have already helped other schools, including the University of California, the University of Colorado, the University of New Mexico and the University of Utah as well as Maricopa County Community Colleges switch to cage-free eggs.
Rhinehart said she was surprised ASU has not yet made the switch.
“It’s an issue that many other schools have addressed and being that ASU is so big on sustainability, it’s unfortunate to see that they are so far behind.”
Rhinehart said cage-free eggs can be slightly more expensive than battery cage eggs, but this cost can be made up by increasing student meal plans by a few dollars.
At the time of publication, more than 3,000 students had signed an online petition stating they want cage-free eggs.
One of these students is sustainability undergraduate Lisa Denny. Denny, while not directly involved in the Cage-Free ASU movement, still supports it.
"(Cage-free eggs are) a sustainability issue that mean so much to our health and well-being, as well as to the economy, the environment and to human society," Denny said.
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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