Mastbender said..
Here in California they passed a law outlawing caged chickens for eggs, they are now all "free range".
People that warned against it said that the cost of the eggs would go up dramatically, and they did. So what happened next? People decided that the cost of the eggs were no longer worth it, so they stopped buying eggs, which lead to an egg glut.
Can't have eggs sitting in the stores w/o anybody buying them, so now the price is almost back down to where they were before the new law. And so far they have generally stayed there, but because so many people found it easy to not eat so many eggs, they still buy fewer, stalling the price increase.
Net result, free range chickens hurt the egg market, but the chickens are happier, those cute chickens. Funny thing though, we now have more chickens available for cooking now, as the prices for them has fallen a bit also, don't need so many egg layers anymore, so kill them and sell them as fryers.
The bigger net result, the chicken farmers are not happy, in fact pissed off, that new law hurt both the egg and fryer market for chickens.
The unintended consequences of thinking you're doing the right thing.
Maybe cheaper for the consumer, but the chicken farmers had to cut back on their stock to stay in business.
And when I say "cut back" that doesn't mean that the surplus chickens were sold off as pets.
I was surprised that Guatemala imports chickens from the USA. Such a poor economy that buys things from the USA when they should be able to raise their own. Maybe that's where all the surplus Californian chickens are going?
Good news ladies, we are going on a holiday to Guatemala.
