The Incredible (Profitable and Shouldn’t be) Edible Egg

While we may not know if the chicken or the egg came first, we do know eggs do not come from the grocery store despite sales and shelving. Like milk, eggs come from cognitive animals that blink in the sun and have preferences about which of their peers they befriend or which area of their pasture is the best. Those refrigerated grocery store aisles have been expertly-designed, applauded, and promoted by the industry leaders like the American Egg Board (AEB). The AEB’s website uses rhetorically kitschy lists of 12 bullet points and 12 organizational suggestions for plan-o-grams to boost sales. Or, wait; revise that. Some eggs do come from there, and when I say there I mean there as the institution that is huge-scale, commercial, industrial, factory food production. The eggs from there are indeed eggs you may want to consider before eating.

Despite the time span of one paragraph, we probably still don’t know if the chicken or the egg came first; however, we do know where our LFFC chickens and eggs come from. A good night’s rest (preferably in flannel winter sheets) assured, the eggs laid by LFFC lady chickens are raised in a way that looks nothing like the life of chickens you read PETA horror stories about. Rather, LFFC’s eggs are laid in environments that look like the imagery conjured by “pastured”—soft, green grass, overgrown dandelions here and there, and chickens dwadalling around foraging for bugs to munch. Perhaps the areas of overgrown dandelions aren’t the dairy cows’ and chickens’ favorite area of the pasture.

Rewind it back: you may want to reconsider eating the eggs that do come from an institution/culture/misunderstanding of food/place like the refrigerated shelves near your grocer’s freezer. Those shelves are:

(1) places that have been designed to encourage consumers to buy—because once they/we buy they/we will use—eggs despite the prior irrelevant egg vacancy in their home fridge;

(2) places that assume “consumer as swayable vehicle for profit;”

(3) places that are stocked by agribusiness that completely ignore everything except the bottom line;

(4) places that are never above wielding the logically fallacious savvy from their professional PR and marketing firms in all written and codified material;

(5) and places that buy from eggmen who want the most return on the least investment.

 These places are designed so the eggs are on the opposite end of the milk not because of categorical belonging but because there are many other dairy somethings to need-upon-noticing between point eggs and point milk. Note: high margin items are shelved at eye level. Notice we’ve only thus far ranted on grocery stores, eggs, government-affiliated/funded (is there a difference?) organizations, and consumers. What about the birds? This is for the birds! 

With simple, rudimentary browsing of a few different, but all government-af-fund-iated, websites that the egg industry (like most I guess) is concerned less with the welfare of its parts (animals, workers, environment, communities) and more with the end to which those parts are means, is an easy conclusion. A conclusion that is gross and upsetting which many times is concluded long after already having purchased from the source or one of its af-fund-iate places. Super bummer. The good news is we never stop learning.

By and large, the white eggs that dominate the egg market are laid in cage systems. Automation is imperative in system of cages because, “care, feeding, maintenance, sanitation, and gathering all take time and money.” Lucky for the egg industry, the Single Comb White Leghorn matures early (more eggs sooner), utilizes feed efficiently (cheap to feed), are relatively small (more birds per minimum space requirements), adapts to a variety of climates (can make money for the industry in a variety of locations), and “produces a relatively large number of white-shelled eggs, the color preferred by most consumers” (money maker).

The eggs that supply LFFC’s organic egg shares are raised from rotationally pastured (not green-washed rhetoric like cage-free) chickens. The idea of rotational pasturing is that the chickens always have new grass full of bugs and yumminess to forage rather than a dry lot of dirt from overworking a particular area until all the bugs are gone. When our chickens are fed supplemental feed—supplemental—it, too, is organic wheat, corn, or soy which means the eggs are certifiable. Our chickens are never, ever de-beaked, or have their beaks trimmed as the euphemistic dishonest egg industry folks might refer to it. Savvy. 

Commercial egg-laying hens are commonly debeaked in an effort to counteract environmentally-induced behaviors like cannibalism, injurious pecking, and stress. Commercial broiler chickens, or those raised for meat, aren’t usually debeaked because they reach slaughter weight before injurious behaviors manifest. Studies have shown that reducing the size of the groups of chickens also reduces pecking and cannibalism— one of many egg industry arguments for cage systems (aside from efficiency and profit) as the cages prohibit the chickens from ever hanging out with any other chickens besides the 6 or so stuffed into each cage. However, if laying hens weren’t stashed in laying houses with hundreds of thousands of their peers in or out of cages, they may not eat each other.

United Egg Producers (UEP) is a group of industry veterans and professionals that represents about 95% of the egg producers in the country. Many UEP group members are former government officials, poultry professionals, or otherwise affiliated individuals. UEP asserts the United States’ egg farmers “provide a safe and humane environment for the flocks of hens that provide the nation’s egg supplies.” Really. I guess that’s why male chicks are ground up alive because they’re of no use for the egg or chicken meat industry. I guess that’s also why they endorse “therapeutic beak trimming” (code speak: repeated debeaking at any age despite the increased stress after a certain age) to curb “outbreaks of cannibalism.” Google “undercover investigation at hyline hatchery.” 

  

Checkmate. 

Photo Credits: Happy chickens in doorway and egg dozen with LFFC logo, CSA Files, all others borrowed from Google images.