Chickens pay price for 'ridiculously cheap' eggs

It is possible for a large commercial egg farm to run a humane operation and still turn a profit, animal welfare experts say.

The most important step is to get rid of the battery cages, the current industry standard in North America for laying hens.

In the European Union, as of last year, battery cages are banned because of their small size and barrenness. In Manitoba, egg producers are phasing out battery cages.

About 100 days after hatching, when they are still pullets and have yet to start laying eggs, the hens are placed into the crowded wired cages, usually arranged in very long rows often stacked one on top of the other.

Battery cages can be seen in a hidden-camera video that went viral over the weekend. The video comes from the group Mercy for Animals Canada and was recorded in the summer at Ku-Ku Farms and Creekside Grove Farms in Alberta.

Replacing battery cages

Tina Widowski, the director of the Campbell Centre for the study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, says replacing battery cages with furnished cages is the "best choice for enriching hens' lives with the least effect on the bottom line."

Tina Widowski, the director of the Campbell Centre for the study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, says replacing battery cages with furnished cages is the "best choice for enriching hens' lives with the least effect on the bottom line." (Nancy Raulston/Courtesy Tina Widowski)

Furnished cages give a hen more than twice the space of the smaller battery cages and provide a nest, a perch and an area for scratching and foraging.

Ian Duncan, who chairs the Global Animal Partnership's welfare and farming advisory committee, supports a move to furnished cages, but says a free run or aviary system would be better still. The latter, with several levels, has been described as a condo for birds.

Duncan says these methods can be used in intensive, large-scale operations, but the bird's welfare is better. The operating costs would be higher, he admits, and the farms would then need to charge more, but he thinks consumers are willing to pay a bit more if better welfare is guaranteed.

Widowski estimates that furnished cages would increase production costs by eight per cent over battery cages and a free run system would result in a 20 to 25 per cent increase.

A study published in Australia in September looked at free-range egg farms, where chickens are allowed outdoor access. The number of free-range farms in Australia has increased 65 per cent over the last five years.

The scientists found that when the chickens go outside, they stick close to a shed or to walls or fences the scientists placed within a large enclosed area. When the walls were present, the birds would venture much further from the barn. The additional walls add a sense of protection from flying predators like eagles and hawks, and also provide environmental stimulation.

Will you pay more for eggs?

Canada is in the midst of a multi-year process of reviewing its national standards or codes of practices for the care and handling of farm animals. While these are voluntary codes, Widowski says they form the basis for legislation in a number of provinces, often included in animal welfare laws.

Animal welfare expert Ian Duncan says eggs are "ridiculously cheap" and that farmers have really succeeded at providing us with cheap food but there's a price to be paid for that and it's the animals paying that price. (Courtesy University of Guelph)

"Farm animal welfare has become a part of doing business in animal agriculture," Widowski says, adding that she paid twice as much for the free-run eggs she bought this past weekend.

"I believe that if we want animal care standards to change we have to be willing to pay for it."

But will consumers in general pay more for their eggs?

Duncan notes that eggs are "ridiculously cheap" and that farmers have succeeded at providing us with cheap food over the last 70 years or so. But there's a price to be paid for that, and he said it's the animals paying that price.

He says that if the general public could see the conditions of the hens that are kept in the battery cages, they would pay a little more for their eggs, as long as they were convinced it would improve animal welfare.

And he thinks that is beginning to happen in North America. It's already happening in Europe, he says, which on this issue he considers to be 10 to 15 years ahead.

Asking the hens

One way to work out how to improve the welfare of chickens is to ask the hens, says Ian Duncan, chair of the Global Animal Partnership.

He describes one technique for doing so. Hens have good colour vision, so he would keep them in pens with coloured nesting boxes. Once a hen began to show an interest in nesting, which it does by giving a distinct call and adopting a certain posture and looking into the nesting boxes, he would take them out of the pen.

Duncan's team would then put the hen on a runway, with a coloured nesting box at the far end of the runway.

"Birds very quickly run along the runway and go into the nest box and show very normal nesting behaviour," he says.

Tina Widowski, director of the Campbell Centre for the study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, identifies additional methods for questioning hens, like giving them preference tests, where they have to make a choice, sometimes by pressing a key, or observing their stress physiology.

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Bell to start tracking mobile customers' habits

Bell mobile customers got a letter last week telling them that, as of Nov. 16, the company would begin collecting detailed information about their consumption habits in order to offer "relevant ads."

'They'll know virtually everything about you.'- Michael Geist, technology law expert

"They'll literally know what web pages you visit, which search terms you enter, where you happen to be, what apps you use, what television you watch, even your calling patterns," says Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor and technology law specialist.

"They figure that level of detail will offer up the ability to have highly targeted advertising. They'll know virtually everything about you."

Customers have until Nov. 16 to opt out, but Geist says they may not be aware of what, exactly, they're really opting out of.

"As far as I can tell, when you're opting out, you're opting out of targeted ads. You're not opting out of the broader collection more generally," Geist told CBC's Daybreak host Mike Finnerty on Tuesday morning.

Philippe Viel of the Montreal-based consumer protection group Union des consommateurs puts it more bluntly.

"The only option to opt out offered is to not receive relevant ads. They're going to collect the data anyway," he says.

Bell refused an interview request, but issued this statement:

"What's new is that we're giving Bell customers the option to receive Internet advertising that's relevant to them rather than the random online advertising they're receiving now. The number of ads customers see won't increase and they can opt-out anytime by visiting bell.ca/relevantads. We're giving customers advance notice before we start offering relevant advertising on Nov. 16."

Geist says customers should be asked to opt in, rather than opt out.

"That's not what they're doing," he says. "They're forcing people to opt out, and making the default that everybody gets monitored and tracked."

Viel said that while Bell may be acting in accordance with the law, the program is not ethically sound. He says customers who aren't in agreement with being tracked don't have many options, considering leaving a mobile contract early means substantial early-termination fees.

Geist and Viel say that the monitoring, while not currently performed by other Canadian telecoms, sets a dangerous precedent. Viel says that mobile providers are prone to following industry trends, and that it may just be a matter of time before other companies start similar programs.

"This is an open invitation for law enforcement to know that they've got one of the most detailed customer profiles possible in the country," he says.

He suggests that, instead of forcing Bell's customers into being monitored, Bell should offer incentives to encourage people to opt-in as a way of sharing the economic value of the data collection windfalls.

A regular discount on customers' monthly bill in exchange for participating in the data collection would be a more appropriate course of action, Geist says.

But both he and Viel say a wider approach is needed to protect mobile users' information.

Provincial and federal regulators need to look at the ethics of this kind of data collection immediately, Viel says — but until then, Bell has no plans to put the brakes on its relevant ads project.

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Facebook drafting new violent content warnings after beheading controversy

Facebook says it's working on new ways to keep users from stumbling across gruesome content on its website following an outcry over the discovery of beheading videos on the site.

The controversy — which has drawn in British Prime Minister David Cameron — illustrates the difficulty of setting a universal standard across the one-billion-user social network.

Facebook banned beheading videos in May but recently lifted the prohibition.

The issue emerged in April after a video allegedly showing the beheading of a woman by a Mexican drug cartel was posted on Facebook. When some users complained about it, Facebook sent them a response saying it had reviewed the video but found it did not violate the company's community standards on graphic violence.

It stressed to users that people were sharing the video on the social network in order to condemn its content.

"Just as TV news programs often show upsetting images of atrocities, people can share upsetting videos on Facebook to raise awareness of actions or causes," Facebook said in a statement at the time. "While this video is shocking, our approach is designed to preserve people's rights to describe, depict and comment on the world in which we live."

It later changed its position after intense criticism from various interest groups advocating for a safer online environment for children. It decided to temporarily remove decapitation videos that were reported by users while it reviewed its policy.

This week, it emerged that it had decided to revert to its original policy and allow the sharing of violent content.

Cameron, whose right-leaning government has unveiled a range of initiatives to censor objectionable content online, said Tuesday that allowing the videos back on the site was "irresponsible."

Facebook said in a statement that it is working on ways to warn people about the content they might see.

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Purple loosestrife's climate adaptation key to its spread

The ability to adapt to drastically different climates within a short period, like decades, is a key factor that allowed the invasive species purple loosestrife to spread so widely, a new study has found. The discovery suggests we may need to alter our strategies if we want to control these new arrivals.

Scientists had long thought that the main reason some invasive species are so successful is that they typically have no natural predators in the environments where they aren't native. This theory has been backed up by evidence from experiments comparing the rates of  reproduction of invasive species exposed to predators and those who haven't been exposed.

But biologist Rob Colautti and his colleagues have found that in the case of the invasive European plant purple loosestrife it was the plant's remarkable ability to evolve quickly to adapt to different climates that was "just as strong" as the lack of predators.

The results were published this week in Science.

Purple loosestrife is a wetland plant that was introduced to the East Coast of North America during the 19th century, likely hitching a ride in soil in the ballast water of European ships. Since then, it has spread as far south as Texas, as far north as northern Ontario and Newfoundland, and as far west as B.C.

According to the Ontario's Invading Species Awareness program, purple loosestrife is a concern because it spreads quickly and grows in dense stands, reducing nutrients and space for native plants, and degrading habitat for wildlife.

Colautti, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, conducted an experiment during his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in which he transplanted loosestrife plants from Texas to Timmins, Ont., and plants from northern Ontario to northern Virginia.

Compared to the transplanted southern plants, the local loosestrife in Timmins flowered 20 days earlier. That allowed them to take advantage of the short growing season and produce 40 times as many seeds.

Similarly, when the northern Ontario plants were grown in Virginia, they produced just a 10th of the seeds that local plants produced because they flowered very early, when they were very small.

The increase in reproductive rates linked to local adaptation was comparable to that seen in the absence of natural predators.

Colautti told CBCNews in an interview that purple loosestrife has spread far and wide mostly in the past 50 years, suggesting that it evolved changes in growth and flowering patterns to adapt to different climates within just a few decades —  very, very quickly.

Multiple introductions boost evolutionary speed

He said there is some evidence that this rapid adaptation ability may be "fairly common" among invasive species, especially those that have spread over a large area.

In fact, the way such species were introduced to North America from other continents may have helped them gain their unusual evolutionary speed. Similar to the pattern seen in many invasive species, genetic analysis of purple loosestrife suggests it was introduced to North America multiple times from different parts of Europe and Asia, which would boost the amount of genetic variation in the North American plants.

"One prediction we might make is that species with higher genetic variation for those traits that are important for local adaptation should evolve faster and spread faster," Colautti said.

The findings of the study have a number of implications for controlling the spread of invasive species.

For one thing, Colautti said, it suggests that limiting the number of times an invasive species is introduced may help prevent it from gaining the genetic diversity needed to spread quickly.

It also suggests that strategies for controlling an invasive species should take into account different populations adapted to different climates, rather than just treating them as a single species.

For example, to control the spread of purple loosestrife, two European beetles that eat the plant's leaves were introduced to North America by the U.S. and Canadian governments in 1992.

Strategies must target distinct populations

Colautti said to maximize their effectiveness, control programs that use beetles need to ensure the insects are feasting at the right time to damage seed production for a given population of loosestrife.

"I think there might be ways to improve them by taking into accounts those differences… among populations," Colautti said.

In theory, he added, the plants' genetic diversity could even be used against them, by transplanting northern plants south and southern plants north. That would introduce "maladaptive" genes for flowering and growth rates that are "wrong" for the climate into local populations.

Another thing that the study's findings suggest is that purple loosestrife will be very resilient to climate change, and that a warmer climate could help it expand its range even further.

"As bad as some of the climate predictions are," Colautti said, "the difference between Texas and Northern Ontario is much larger than the difference from current climate to future climate."

The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Cow burps tapped for fuel

Argentine scientists have found a way to transform the gas created by the bovine digestive system into fuel, an innovation that could curb greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Using a system of valves and pumps, the experimental technique developed by Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) channels the digestive gases from bovine stomach cavities through a tube and into a tank.

The gases — which otherwise are commonly known as burps, or "eruptos" in Spanish — are then processed to separate methane from other gases such as carbon dioxide.

Each cow emits between 250 and 300 liters of pure methane a day, enough energy to keep a refrigerator running for 24 hours. (REUTERS)

Methane is the main component of natural gas, used to fuel everything from cars to power plants.

"Once you get it compressed, it's the same as having natural gas," said Guillermo Berra, head of INTA's animal physiology group.

"As an energy source it is not very practical at the moment, but if you look ahead to 2050, when fossil fuel reserves are going to be in trouble, it is an alternative," he told Reuters.

Each head of cattle emits between 250 and 300 liters of pure methane a day, enough energy to keep a refrigerator running for 24 hours.

Argentina is one of the world's top beef exporters, with around 51 million heads of cattle. Gases emitted from those animals account for 30 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, according to INTA, with methane having 23 times the global warming effect as carbon dioxide.

"This is also a way to mitigate that," Berra said.

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Facebook service restored after disruption

Facebook users had temporary problems adding posts Monday morning, but the problem has been fixed.

Facebook users are able to add posts again after worldwide service disruptions ended this morning. 

Service was back up by 10:15 a.m. ET, users reported on Twitter and other networks.

Earlier in the day, users reported error messages when trying to post status updates, photos and other items; click "like"; or send messages on Facebook. 

The website "downrightnow.com," which tracks user-reported online service outages, said Facebook was experiencing a "likely service disruption."

Around 9 a.m., Iain McKenzie, European communications manager for Facebook, acknowledged via Twitter that Facebook was aware of problems posting to the site and was looking into it.

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Lunar eclipse, meteor shower treat Canadians this weekend

Two cosmic events, a penumbral lunar eclipse Friday and a meteor shower on Sunday, are making for an interesting weekend in Canadian skies.

Sunday night to dawn on Monday will be the peak of the Orionid meteor shower. 

"In the darker hours, look towards [the constellation] Orion the hunter, generally in the southeast sky" and it will appear that meteors are coming from Orion's club, said Colin Haig, vice-president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

The meteor shower will peak at 10 to 20 meteors per hour just before dawn on Monday, according to Earthsky.org. Unfortunately, the brightness of the full moon will make the meteors difficult to see for most Canadians. 

Though the moon will detract somewhat from that cosmic show, it provided one of its own earlier this weekend.

Just before 8 p.m. ET Friday, the bottom half of the full moon was darkened by the Earth's shadow during the penumbral lunar eclipse.

The Earth's shadow has two distinct regions: A very dark, central region called the umbra, and a diffuse outer region called the penumbra.

The penumbra caused the moon to get dimmer Friday night until about two-thirds of the moon was cloaked in shadow at 8:50 p.m. People in Eastern Canada could see the entire event, weather permitting, but it was well underway at moonrise for those in Central and Western Canada. The penumbral eclipse was subtle but still noticeable to anyone who stopped to take a look.

Even subtle eclipses can "help people understand that our solar system is in motion," Haig said. "It's a fairly rare event, a couple times a year at best and it happens in a matter of a few hours."

People in Eastern Canada will be able to see the entire penumbral lunar eclipse, but it will be well underway Friday night at moonrise for people in Central and Western Canada. (Fred Espenak/Royal Astronomical Society of Canada)

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Purple loosestrife's climate adaptation key to its spread

The ability to adapt to drastically different climates within a short period, like decades, is a key factor that allowed the invasive species purple loosestrife to spread so widely, a new study has found. The discovery suggests we may need to alter our strategies if we want to control these new arrivals.

Scientists had long thought that the main reason some invasive species are so successful is that they typically have no natural predators in the environments where they aren't native. This theory has been backed up by evidence from experiments comparing the rates of  reproduction of invasive species exposed to predators and those who haven't been exposed.

But biologist Rob Colautti and his colleagues have found that in the case of the invasive European plant purple loosestrife it was the plant's remarkable ability to evolve quickly to adapt to different climates that was "just as strong" as the lack of predators.

The results were published this week in Science.

Purple loosestrife is a wetland plant that was introduced to the East Coast of North America during the 19th century, likely hitching a ride in soil in the ballast water of European ships. Since then, it has spread as far south as Texas, as far north as northern Ontario and Newfoundland, and as far west as B.C.

According to the Ontario's Invading Species Awareness program, purple loosestrife is a concern because it spreads quickly and grows in dense stands, reducing nutrients and space for native plants, and degrading habitat for wildlife.

Colautti, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, conducted an experiment during his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in which he transplanted loosestrife plants from Texas to Timmins, Ont., and plants from northern Ontario to northern Virginia.

Compared to the transplanted southern plants, the local loosestrife in Timmins flowered 20 days earlier. That allowed them to take advantage of the short growing season and produce 40 times as many seeds.

Similarly, when the northern Ontario plants were grown in Virginia, they produced just a 10th of the seeds that local plants produced because they flowered very early, when they were very small.

The increase in reproductive rates linked to local adaptation was comparable to that seen in the absence of natural predators.

Colautti told CBCNews in an interview that purple loosestrife has spread far and wide mostly in the past 50 years, suggesting that it evolved changes in growth and flowering patterns to adapt to different climates within just a few decades —  very, very quickly.

Multiple introductions boost evolutionary speed

He said there is some evidence that this rapid adaptation ability may be "fairly common" among invasive species, especially those that have spread over a large area.

In fact, the way such species were introduced to North America from other continents may have helped them gain their unusual evolutionary speed. Similar to the pattern seen in many invasive species, genetic analysis of purple loosestrife suggests it was introduced to North America multiple times from different parts of Europe and Asia, which would boost the amount of genetic variation in the North American plants.

"One prediction we might make is that species with higher genetic variation for those traits that are important for local adaptation should evolve faster and spread faster," Colautti said.

The findings of the study have a number of implications for controlling the spread of invasive species.

For one thing, Colautti said, it suggests that limiting the number of times an invasive species is introduced may help prevent it from gaining the genetic diversity needed to spread quickly.

It also suggests that strategies for controlling an invasive species should take into account different populations adapted to different climates, rather than just treating them as a single species.

For example, to control the spread of purple loosestrife, two European beetles that eat the plant's leaves were introduced to North America by the U.S. and Canadian governments in 1992.

Strategies must target distinct populations

Colautti said to maximize their effectiveness, control programs that use beetles need to ensure the insects are feasting at the right time to damage seed production for a given population of loosestrife.

"I think there might be ways to improve them by taking into accounts those differences… among populations," Colautti said.

In theory, he added, the plants' genetic diversity could even be used against them, by transplanting northern plants south and southern plants north. That would introduce "maladaptive" genes for flowering and growth rates that are "wrong" for the climate into local populations.

Another thing that the study's findings suggest is that purple loosestrife will be very resilient to climate change, and that a warmer climate could help it expand its range even further.

"As bad as some of the climate predictions are," Colautti said, "the difference between Texas and Northern Ontario is much larger than the difference from current climate to future climate."

The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Canadian downloading site isoHunt shut down, fined $110M US

A Vancouver resident has agreed to shut down his popular downloading website and pay a $110-million fine after settling a long legal fight with the Motion Picture Association of America.

Gary Fung ran isohunt.com, a search engine for BitTorrent files, which helped users find virtually every type of copyrighted material, including music, movies, computer software, ebooks and pornography.

'Sad to see my baby go.'—Gary Fung, isoHunt.com

As of Friday, the site stated it linked to 13.7 million active BitTorrent files with 51 million users either uploading or download them.

According to Alexa.com, it ranked as the 423rd top site on the web for global traffic and 167th in Canada.

On his blog, Fung said he was "sad to see my baby go."

"But I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. Ten-and-a-half years of isoHunt has been a long journey by any business definition, and forever in internet startup time. It started as a programming hobby in my university days that has become so, so much more," Fung wrote.

"It's been a learning experience beyond what I imagined. I've done the best I could pushing the social benefits of BitTorrent and file sharing, the searching and sharing of culture itself, but it's time for me to move on to new software ideas and projects."

MPAA, which represents Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros., originally launched its legal challenge of isoHunt in 2006.

It said in a statement that the settlement was "a major step forward in realizing the enormous potential of the internet as a platform for legitimate commerce and innovation."

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Lunar eclipse, meteor shower treat Canadians this weekend

During a penumbral lunar eclipse, left, part of the moon is temporarily cloaked by the outer part of the Earth's shadow. The effect is subtle, but noticeable. (David M. F. Chapman/Royal Astronomical Society of Canada)

Two cosmic events, a penumbral lunar eclipse tonight and a meteor shower on Sunday, may make it worth your while this weekend to cast a glance at the night sky.

Starting just before 8 p.m. ET Friday, the bottom half of the full moon will be darkened by the Earth's shadow during the penumbral lunar eclipse.

The Earth's shadow has two distinct regions: A very dark, central region called the umbra, and a diffuse outer region called the penumbra.

The penumbra will cause the moon to get dimmer Friday night until about two-thirds of the moon is cloaked in shadow at 8:50 p.m. People in Eastern Canada will be able to see the entire event, but it will be well underway at moonrise for those in Central and Western Canada. This penumbral eclipse will be subtle but still noticeable to anyone who stops to take a look.

Even subtle eclipses can "help people understand that our solar system is in motion," said Colin Haig, vice-president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. "It's a fairly rare event, a couple times a year at best and it happens in a matter of a few hours."

Sunday night to dawn on Monday will be the peak of the Orionid meteor shower. 

"In the darker hours, look towards [the constellation] Orion the hunter, generally in the southeast sky," says Haig, and it will appear that meteors are coming from Orion's club. 

The meteor shower will peak at 10 to 20 meteors per hour just before dawn on Monday, according to Earthsky.org. Unfortunately, the brightness of the full moon will make the meteors difficult to see for most Canadians. 

People in Eastern Canada will be able to see the entire penumbral lunar eclipse, but it will be well underway Friday night at moonrise for people in Central and Western Canada. (Fred Espenak/Royal Astronomical Society of Canada)

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