Letters to the Editor: Eggs for $7 and rampant poverty — is this the progressive dream, California?

To the editor: California is the wealthiest state in the nation, and yet it hosts the largest percentage of the population living in functional poverty. Why? The outrageous price of eggs is emblematic. ("$7 a dozen? Why California eggs are so expensive — and increasingly hard to find," Jan. 7)

Housing, gas and eggs are among the most basic needs for citizens, and all are exorbitantly priced in California due to onerous tax and regulatory conditions. Housing is expensive due to regulations like those that result from the California Environmental Quality Act, which has been weaponized to prevent development.

Our high gasoline prices are due to the highest taxes in the nation and special blend requirements. High egg prices are due to the avian flu, but they are significantly exacerbated by the Proposition 12 "free range" requirements that limit our egg supply to 30% of all producers.

In a supposedly progressive state, these are all policies that push the cost of basics into unaffordable territory for the poorest Californians. This is by definition regressive, and it explains California's epidemic of functional poverty.

Kenneth Broad, Mill Valley, Calif.

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To the editor: This longtime animal advocate stopped purchasing eggs when I discovered how much factory-farmed chickens suffered. Now I enjoy a healthy plant-based diet.

I am also aware that there is no such thing as "cheap" in any field, and this is especially true in animal agriculture. The sentient creatures who are the unwilling part of this industrial system pay for that "cheapness" with brutal, short existences.

So, to learn that many consumers are now grumbling about high prices for eggs does not worry me. If customers knew of the inhumane practices to which chickens are subject, would they still hunger for eggs and meat?

I would hope that many would reject this cruelty and say that $7 is far too small a price to pay for it.

Elaine Livesey-Fassel, Los Angeles

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To the editor: It is heartening that many states are passing legislation to provide at least a modicum of "welfare" laws on behalf of farmed animals.

As for egg shortages, please. Birds and pigs since a year ago or more have been tortured to death slowly in the procedure of mass extermination known as "ventilation shutdown-plus."

In this process, the creatures are deprived of air to breathe and subjected to extreme heat designed to induce heatstroke. Anyone with a conscience who has watched chickens and pigs dying under this merciless procedure can only be sickened by the bottomless cruelty of agribusiness and the helpless agony of our innocent victims.

As long as chickens are forced to live in squalor, avian influenza will recycle. This is "egg-xactly" a fact.

Karen Davis, Machipongo, Va.

The writer is president of the group United Poultry Concerns.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.