A law passed six years ago by the voters of California came down solidly on the side of the chicken. It was a question of whether the price of eggs outweighed the living conditions of the chickens who produced them. The voters decided that the cages housing chickens should be larger. The chickens should be able to turn around and flap their wings. The fact that they aren't able to do those two things tells you something about their current living conditions.
As the new rules go into effect, the opposition is speaking up. Eggs, they say, as a result of this wicked law, will cost more. And since the producers of all eggs sold in California will have to comply with the law, out-of-state farmers will have to alter their chicken coops too. A long list of complaints have been lodged against the chickens. At the top of the list is the idea that higher egg prices will hurt “the poor” most of all. You see “the poor” rely on the inexpensive egg for protein in their diet.
If we put the chicken ahead of the egg, we're hurting the poor. That's the argument anyway. We can't afford to be kind to chickens. We've put the poor in such tight cages that they can't flap their wings or even turn around. If we increase the price of eggs, the suffering of the poor will become intolerable. The price of eggs is the straw that will break the camel's back. This is the logic we've locked ourselves into. We can't help the chicken and we can't help the poor. Kindness is too expensive.
The key moral question of our age: which came first, the chicken or the egg?