COPY DESK WATCH….I’d like to nominate this for misleading headline of the year:
Prop. 2 probably won’t hike egg prices
Proposition 2 is the initiative that requires hens to be kept in cages that allow them to move around a bit. I voted for it, and it passed yesterday 63%-37%. But here’s the story behind the headline:
Egg prices probably will not increase for Californians, according to a study by the UC Davis Agricultural Issues Center. That’s because out-of-state farmers, who already supply Californians a third of their eggs — and could provide more — are not affected by the new law, so they won’t have to change their housing.
….”The most likely outcome, therefore, is the elimination of almost all of the California egg industry over a few years,” says the report.
So egg prices won’t go up, but only because the California egg industry will be utterly destroyed. By this logic, the headline after Black Tuesday should have been, “Apple industry opens new distribution channel on Wall Street.” Sheesh.
UPDATE: Actually, this is even weirder than it looks. The print version of this story bears practically no resemblance to the online version, and doesn’t even include the quote about the elimination of the egg industry. Very strange.
