Editor, The Times:
Food companies that offer deceptive advertising to get you to buy their products really annoy me.
I sometimes spend more money to buy products that promise to contribute to my health so I’ll be healthy and live longer. I think it’s pretty dirty that big corporations would take advantage of this inclination to suggest their products are healthier when they are not.
Regularly, I’ve noticed a poultry supplier advertising that its animals are free-range and humanely treated.
There is strong implication that the company stands out from the competition in this regard and should be praised for its contribution to raising the standards for poultry welfare and for creating healthier food.
In fact, meat poultry in Canada is all free-range — free-range chickens are raised in large barns with some access to the outdoors — and there is nothing special or particularly healthy or good (for the chickens or consumer) about that corporation’s chicken factory.
Chickens still don’t see the light of day, they still have a limited diet and they are still jammed together in a big building.
I think the corporation is hoping consumers will confuse the plight of laying hens with that of meat birds.
Most laying hens live their lives in cages. A few farmers raise uncaged laying hens and it costs more to do so, so they charge more for their eggs.
Suggesting they are special because their meat birds are uncaged is strawman fallacy.
It is unfair for the consumer and unfair for the birds.
Tom Puittinen
Kamloops, B.C.