I DON’T CARE ABOUT BEING FAIR- Two stories

While I basically am a very charitable person; I have no problem saying that I am a very selfish person when it comes to what I care about. By that I mean—if something does not have an influence on my life, I don’t care about it! Poverty, education, homelessness, etc. have an effect on my life so I am concerned about those topics, but do I care about funding for county fairs or cage free eggs? Not!

Illinois County Fairs

Last week, both the Illinois House and Senate cut their budgets for the Illinois Department of Agriculture by about 10%, which will impact funding for county fairs. The House has earmarked $5.4 million and the Senate $4.5 million for county fairs, livestock premiums and 4-H clubs. Illinois has 104 county fairs even though the state only has 102 counties! That is too many fairs in my estimation and why should tax-payers fund the fairs that they are not even attending?

The major Illinois State Fair that is held in the capital of Springfield has been allotted $4.3 million and the DuQuoin State Fair in southern Illinois will get about half a million or so. So the state is wasting $5 million so people can see some cows? Drive to southern Illinois if you want to see a cow - you don’t have to go to a fair to see one.  Or go to the museum in Glenview that has cows—who wants to spend gas money driving to Springfield?

In a time of cutbacks for essential human services, who cares about fairs because they do not produce any revenue? They are red ink af”fairs” and I think should be totally eliminated. I laugh at the lawmakers who say that fairs bring people and money into the state because I doubt if other Midwesterners are leaving their own states (that  have their own county fairs) to come to the ones in Illinois. So who are the people who might be coming to Illinois and spending money attending a fair? Not! It is local people, not new money!

CAGE FREE EGGS 

McDonald’s, the fast food giant, announced at its annual meeting last week that it would start buying 1 million cage free eggs a month and buy another 1 million eggs per month from chickens that live in “enriched housing” habitats that provide more space and also include perching and nesting areas. General Mills made the same type announcement in April as part of their, “Corporate Social Responsibility” initiative. Everybody is jumping on the bed wagon of treating chickens fairly.

Sounds good? Not! According to Crain’s Chicago Business, “McDonald's spokespeople could not immediately say how many total eggs the fast-food chain uses a month.” To put the number of 24 million “happy” eggs a year in perspective, Hellman’s uses 350 millions eggs a year just to produce mayonnaise.

There are 31,000 McDonalds’ restaurants.  If they each sold only 100 Egg McMuffins a day,that would be more than 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) eggs a year consumed. Compare that to the number 24 million!

I really don’t care about McDonald’s going cage free on some eggs on two different levels. First, the number of cage free eggs they are using is a joke because the number is so small in scope as to be virtually meaningless. Second, let’s be honest here--in the end the poultry all become McNuggets--unless there is a two-headed chicken who goes on display at a county fair.