Corporate takeover of organic egg market

Video about how corporate agribusiness egg producers use sneaky tricks to barely pass as "organic."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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zblack_eagle

I wasn’t aware that “organic” was supposed to automatically translate as “free range”.

“Cage eggs” are from hens locked in cages
“Cage free” and “Barn laid” are from hens crammed in huge buildings but are otherwise “free” to move around and feed in a figurative mosh pit.
“Free range” ideally means that the hens have reasonable access to a reasonable amount of outdoors pasture, but because of the premium people are willing to pay for eggs from hens that are farmed humanely, the label is effectively meaningless without certification from an independent organisation and knowing what the requirements are to receive that certification.

“Organic” applies to the feed for the chickens and if the hens are administered anything inorganic to promote growth or resistance to disease. Would you consider eggs from genuine free range chickens to be organic if the pasture they fed from was chemically fertilised?
jimkirk

Here’s a thought…Google Maps. I did a search for Petaluma Poultry and found several addresses. You can zoom in to a point where if there were thousands of chickens outdoors you would certainly be able to see them.

Disclaimer: I wasn’t able to do an exhaustive search, and I’m not going to try to prove a negative with no evidence.

However, if enough people searched enough to get a reasonable probability for or against…someone could even publish the info on the internet, contact farms and ask them to provide coordinates where their pastures are for verification…
NK

There are ways to get amazing eggs without having to resort to store bought ones or going to a farmers market. For example, those that live in the NYC area can get them via these people: http://www.traditionalfoodsclub.com

Another good way to find good produce is from the Weston Price foundation: http://www.westonaprice.org/chapters/index.php#ca

They have all their local chapters listed there, which can help you find the nearest source of great food. I know vegetarians hate the Weston Price foundation since they endorse meat consumption, but they have a strong emphasis on high quality organic, nutritious and humanely raised food and are a good resource to get hooked up with ethical farms.

Probably not worth the trouble if you only eat eggs once in a while, but really good eggs does wonders to your health. My health as improved tenfold since i started eating good eggs (and dairy) daily.
Anonymous

I balance eating ‘organic’ ‘free range’ ‘vegetarian fed’ and regular eggs. I feel that buying any one of the first three will lead to the likelihood that small and even legitimately produced eggs will be available in the future. Looks like the law needs fixed to clear up what free range is. I don’t see why organic and outdoor go together. To me all indoor with organic feed is good enough to be organic.

But to say free range with a small hole for k’s worth of chickens is bad.

I don’t have regular access to organic free range vegetarian fed eggs and sometimes the $$(I’ve seen $6doz? here in LA).

I don’t worry about the chickens eating animal products, just which products they eat. Wild insects good, meat processing byproducts bad.
Anonymous

Whether you’re interested in bettering your health, your community, or the lives and welfare of animals, consumption of animals products (in particular meat, dairy, eggs) just doesn’t make sense. Take the time to research and consider what you’re eating, and stop supporting factory farming in the USA.

Suggested reading: Peter Singer, _The Ethics of What We Eat_; J.S. Foer, _Eating Animals_.
Anonymous

While I prefer to buy vegetarian-fed, free-range brown eggs, a number of recent blind taste tests done by bloggers and food writers have demonstrated that there its almost impossible to tell the difference between different types of eggs.

The color of the yolks can tell a little about the nutritional content of the egg: the more orange, the more carotenoids (Vitamin A) the egg has.
agroman

Hooray for Diana and Jim Murphy, Dreamfarm and the Westside Community Market in Madison, WI. I have had their eggs, and truly amazing goat cheese (Herbes de Provence is my favorite). If you are anywhere near Madison, I suggest trying some out.
brillow

No one used a “trick” to “barely pass.” They passed because they meet the letter of the law. I am sure they had many regulatory compliance lawyers overlook everything.

The problem is organic doesn’t mean what people think it does. It’s essentially then just a marketing term. I’d imagine this is because the legislators and policy makers who control these things get votes by saying “we will promote organic” but the actual policy, the rules, are made by companies.

As far as health concerns though, I have no idea. Seems like life expectancy keeps going up.
Xeni Jardin

I think this is gross, and it’s why I decided to stop eating eggs earlier this year (and go vegan). Maybe if I had chickens in my back yard I’d eat eggs once in a while, but I don’t, so the simplest way for me to opt out of this kind of bullshit is to not buy eggs.
MrWednesday

It’s not about the eggs, it’s about the wwelfare of the chickens.
Anonymous

I like how people like to buy only from local farms and look for ethical/organic/free range products. When I lived in a more rural area we grew/harvested/raised most of our own food (garden, chickens, eggs, goats, rabbits, bees, milk – big extended family to share) and it was entirely to our standards.

However, this is something that is dependent on the density of the population. If everyone in the city starts driving out to the nearby country to buy their dinner suddenly your nice little farm producers have not enough food to sell. So maybe everyone gets into their cars and drives out even further. In fact, you can only be morally superior about your food shopping habits precisely because a whole other group of people don’t do the same thing as you.

Solutions that work on an individual basis are not always scalable to whole populations. People who claim superiority via un-scalable solutions should consider sharing the accolades with all those who don’t do the same thing thus enabling their farm shopping.
DaughterNumberThree

Looking at the Cornucopia ratings methodology, they assigned 0 points to any question that wasn’t answered. The Petaluma Egg Farm folks did not answer the survey at all, saying they had never heard of the Cornucopia Institute.

Clearly, there are several issues here. Basing a rating like this on self-reports is only as good as the honesty of the farmers. It seems odd that Cornucopia (whose staff generally doesn’t trust big organic ag as far as they can throw it) would rely on self-reports.

Also, to give a farmer a 1 egg rating for not responding seems unfair in the extreme. Cornucopia has lumped together all non-responders under a heading that reads â€œethically deficient – industrial organics/no meaningful outdoor access and/or none were open enough to participate.” I read the page several times before I noticed that last part — “Ethically deficient” springs out at the reader, while the trailing phrase “none were open enough to participate” gets missed.

It’s a leap to say that someone who doesn’t respond is not “open enough to participate,” too. The Petaluma folks say they had never heard of Cornucopia and given that they’re in California and Cornucopia is in Wisconsin, that seems plausible.

Other non-responders include big organic operations like Horizon and Land O’Lakes.

So Cornucopia has essentially trashed the reputation of an organic farm with 28 years in the business because they didn’t respond to a survey. It would have been much more fair to list egg producers who didn’t respond as not responding, rather than labeling them as “ethically deficient.”

I wonder what rating Petaluma’s self-report to Cornucopia’s questions would have gotten? If what Petaluma writes on their website is true, it sounds like they’d get at least a 3.
- cvallaeys
  
  The Cornucopia Institute contacted Petaluma Farms multiple times, including through two letters sent by certified mail, and several phone calls. Petaluma Farms never responded. When a Cornucopia representative showed up in person at Petaluma Farms to request a visit of the organic henhouses, the request was promptly denied. A quick look at the henhouses confirmed that not a single laying hen was outside.
  
  And, it should be noted that the majority of all certified organic egg producers were happy to be transparent with their customers and participate in The Cornucopia Institute research study.
  
  Cornucopia researchers therefore researched this industrial conventional and organic egg operation through other means (public documents, media reports, a profile in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivores Dilemma, photography we took on the site, and satellite imagery). We quickly discovered that Petaluma Farms uses a â€œveterinary noteâ€ to justify the continuous indoor confinement of its organic hens. The USDAâ€™s organic standards clearly state that â€œcontinuous total confinement of any animal indoors is prohibitedâ€ (205.239(a)(1)). Moreover, the National Organic Standards Board recently determined that the â€œthreat of diseaseâ€ cannot be used to justify continuous confinementâ€”yet this remains Petaluma Farmsâ€™ excuse for denying their hens outdoor access.
  
  Just a couple of miles down the road from Petaluma Farms is another large-scale organic egg operation that complies fully with the organic standards mandating outdoor access for hens. We also found several other Northern Californian organic egg farms where chickens enjoyed outdoor runs and pastureâ€”Petaluma Farms is a sad aberration and a betrayal to the values that the organic industry was founded upon.
  
  We agree with Petaluma Farms that they are better than conventional eggs for being pesticide-free, cage-free and antibiotic-free, but the federal organic law also requires outdoor access. If other organic egg producers must comply with this law, we believe Petaluma Farms should as well.
  
  We call their rhetoric, and the pretty pictures and prose common on the websites and packages of organic eggs coming from factory farms, “farming by press release.” It’s a lot harder and more expensive to actually do the heavy lifting and comply with the federal organic standards. But it might not be as profitable.
deebee77

Thank you sooooo much for posting this. I am really surprised that these factories would get away with the organic label. buyer beware….the owners of those places suck and I vow NEVER to buy any product from them.
jimkirk

Like simonbarsinister, my wife and I get as much food as we can from known sources. We are Community Sponsored Agriculture Farm members, get our meat from a local ethical farm, fruit from local orchards, eggs from a friend at work, honey from a beekeeper friend…

I think it’s good to know and see where our food comes from, and to support small, local farms. With proper cautions concerning the machinery, CSA farms tend to be kid education friendly, and often supply produce to food banks and do other good things.

I feel it also helps keep me in touch with nature. When I was a kid it was a thrill when peaches or apricots were finally in season and worth waiting for. Today I could go to my local big box grocer and get peaches any time of the year, but they’re mostly bland and pulpy after a x000 mile journey from who knows where. I’d rather not bother. Of course, some things just aren’t indigenous everywhere, and I don’t have a root cellar. Though one local orchard does, and has good apples all year long.

I find things taste better, since most supermarket varieties are bred for things like consistency, bruise resistance and shelf life instead of taste and nutritional value. Heirloom tomatoes, Cox Orange Pippin apples…yum!

There’s also an element of surprise, and we’ve learned how to use items we’d never think of buying but were in out weekly share. A real tasty learning experience.

http://www.localharvest.org/ will help you locate a CSA farm near you, at least in the USA and southern Canada.
suede

new documentary i saw the other night covering just this! http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Anonymous

its Not just eggs, the organic movement got taken over by agribusiness and many of the founders of the movement sold out. I’d suggest reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan or Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser. or the movie Food Inc.

the term Organic is also tightly controlled – you have to meet various conditions, and it costs big bucks to be certified (at least in the US). This in effect makes small operations uncompetitive. Agribusiness realized that people will pay a lot more for organic so over the past 20 years the term really has become meaningless.

For instance there are now organic CAFO’s. You can call your chickens free-range if there is one tiny door (in a hen house of 30,000 birds) that is open after the 3rd week of their lives.. (And they only last 4 -5 weeks before they’re slaughtered).
Anonymous

Great piece, I had no idea… thanks for posting, I’ll definitely be doing my homework.
fyreflye

#25: “you can only be morally superior about your food shopping habits precisely because a whole other group of people don’t do the same thing as you”

Nobody here is claiming to be “morally superior.” They are *acting* in a what they consider a moral manner to make the world a slightly better place – the only thing most of us can do in the face of corporate greed, public indifference and governmental negligence.
ThomDowting

Executive Summary:

TRADER JOE’S
Don’t buy any eggs from Trader Joe’s because they’re full of it. All their eggs are factory produced.

WHOLE FOODS
Buy ONLY ‘Vital Farms’ eggs. All other eggs at WF that claim otherwise are factory farm lies.

ALL OTHERS
Never heard of ‘em.

My Summary:

The only relevance this has for me is that I now know not to buy from TJ’s and WF’s (Vital Farms excepted for the latter). I’ll probably end up buying the ‘Vital Farms’ eggs from WF’s. I can only imagine how much extra they’ll cost. Looks like I’ll probably be going from 2 eggs a day to 1 but if it means the difference between one of those mosh pits and an open pasture, well, it’s worth it. Especially if it means a smaller ethical farmer gets a chance against the soul-less monster giant mega-lo-producers.

As for the rest, I guess I’ll have to go to my local farmer’s market and see who’s out there selling what. Anyone know if local farmer’s market suppliers are on the list? I’m in L.A.

P.S. I agree, the point of this isn’t the “Organic” label, rather the ethical treatment of animals. A bit confusing on Cornucopia’s part but I guess they too are trying to cash in on the ‘Organic’ moniker.
Anonymous

Are they trying to tell us that organic foods may be a scam of some sort? IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Jess

Appreciate linking to your source, but definitely interested in their report results, too. http://www.cornucopia.org/organic-egg-scorecard/ Took a lot of click-throughs to get there.
chillitom

How upsetting! Who do we write to?
- Oneoliner
  
  Just write to free range customer complaints,
  or to your local chicken freedom camp.
Nancy Bee

To those who wish they had an alternative to commercial eggs without driving- ask around. Ask your friends, pass the word around that you are looking for homegrown eggs. It is very likely that you will find a friend or coworker who raises a few chickens and can bring eggs to you at work. I have been getting backyard eggs over the last 15 years or so from several different people. In all cases it was easy and convenient. One person dropped them off at my door on her way to work, another person brought them to me at work, right now we get a neighborhood delivery of 5 to 10 dozen dropped off in an accessible refrigerator. There are options- ask around. I feel that the chickens I get eggs from are much better off than any chicken raised by the 1000 and tens of thousands.
Unmutual

Basically every brand available to consumers through Whole Foods, local supermarket chains, and Trader Joes, is on the bottom of this list.

I realize it is not the Cornucopia Institute’s job to pat consumers on the back from spending an extra dollar on “free range” “organic” eggs, but really all this scorecard tells me is that I am wasting my money and may as well just buy the cheap dozen conventional eggs.

I mean I am not in a position to drive 30 miles outside the city once a week just to purchase eggs . . .
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  may as well just buy the cheap dozen conventional eggs.
  
  Actually eggs are one of the few things that really are much cheaper at TJs.
fyreflye

To me the the most serious issue in the area of humane treatment of hens is whether the farmers snip their beaks. Because of the horribly crowded conditions under which the chickens in factory farms live they go crazy and aggressively tear at each other with their beaks, causing injury or death. In order to prevent this farmers cut off their beaks. If the chickens really have free range this cruel surgery is unnecessary. The Cornucopia web site doesn’t mention this and I’ve never seen a notice about beak snipping on any egg carton containing eggs claimed to be “organic,” though any eggs that meet humane as well as organic standards should come from true free range hens. Those of you who buy directly from farmers should ask about this practice.
Dave Faris

I’m pretty sure that it’s a scientific falsehood when he says that small farm organic eggs are “nutritionally superior” to other alternatives.
- elskip
  
  That’s an interesting skeptical point to raise. I had always “heard” that free-range eggs from chickens allowed to forage and eat bugs and such were actually nutritionally superior. The Nutritional Content section of the wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_eggs ) states:
  
  “Data from reliable research is scarce; however, some small studies suggest the nutritional content of eggs from genuine free-range hens (hens that forage daily on a grass range) is superior to that of eggs produced by conventional means. These studies report higher levels of Omega 3 and Vitamins A and E, and lower levels of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and Omega 6.[8][9][10][11]
  
  A study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found no nutritional benefits to free-range eggs”
  
  Of course that doesn’t irrefutably prove that they are. This is also referring to free-range versus “organic” which is another distinction.
Jess

OKAY, wait, just found this: http://www.petalumaeggfarm.com/knowthetruth.html (counter argument to egg score card, also here: http://www.petalumaeggfarm.com/happening.html)

Not sure what to think; their eggs (Rock Island Cage Free) are really good (thick shells, good taste), so I wanted to see where they were on the report, and I was searching their product, not their brand (Judy’s Family Farm) which lead to the find of their counter argument from my google search.
simonbarsinister

I don’t trust any corporation not to lie to me.

That is why I buy all of my food from farms that either I have visited personally or personal friends of mine have visited. All of it.
- simonbarsinister
  
  Ok, not all of it. Not bananas. Not Mangos either. Now that I think of it not my fish either. I’m pretty fond of macadamias too. They don’t grow here on the East Coast. Oh and figs. I love figs.
  
  *sigh*
  
  Ok, I buy all of my meat, dairy, and many of my vegetables from local farms that I have visited or my friends have visited.
farmfoodie

Petaluma Egg Farm’s outraged response to the Cornucopia scorecard leaves much to be desired. They say that they didn’t respond to the survey request because they’d never heard of Cornucopia. Okay. That’s not a response which is dictated by logic, but fair enough. That being the case though, I would ask two things. Why, if they regard the Cornucopia Institute as insignificant, do they launch a full-blown response to the work of an insignificant organization? Also, if this company is really so dedicated to organic principles, why have they never heard of the Cornucopia Institute? They had a pretty high profile report on organic dairy a year or so back. Granted, eggs and dairy aren’t the same thing, but a genuine interest in organics would suggest to me that producers would keep their ears to the ground, so to speak.

More specifically, PEF does not back up several of their counter arguments to the scorecard with any specificity. So California has a history of poultry disease outbreaks? Why would that be? Is CA inherently unhealthy for poultry? If so, perhaps it’s simply not a wise move to insist on raising poultry there. Would an organic approach recommend expending so much energy to overcome something that nature apparently does not favor? Or would it have something to do with practices on industrial poultry farms? They say their chickens have safe and healthy outdoor access. But they don’t say how many square feet of outdoor space is available per laying hen. Are they meeting the letter of the regulations, as this film suggests about so many laying operations, but not the spirit? I would guess so. Another one of their claims is that their hens eat an all-vegetarian diet. Chickens are natural omnivores, and demonstrably love to eat insects if given any chance to do so. So PEF may indeed meet the regulatory definition of “organic,” but their hens’ diet is far from what most people mean when they talk about “healthy and natural.”