Egg Recall Highlights the Dangers of Mass Food Production

Ahh, the age-old question: Which came first, the chicken or the salmonella?

The recall of more than 550 million eggs that the FDA has traced to salmonella contamination of a hen feed originating in Iowa is making many Americans, including myself, think twice about where the eggs we prepare for our families come from.

In light of the recall--which The Wall Street Journal has reported may be the largest since the FDA began tracking foodbourne illnesses in the 1970s—I decided to do a little investigation on the two egg brands I usually buy.

The Farmer's Cow Connecticut Eggs (which are available at Stop & Shop, but not at A&P) and Land O' Lakes All-Natural Eggs are similarly priced at about $3.50 per dozen, but a bit more investigating leads me to believe that the Connecticut-sourced eggs are a far more healthy and ethical choice.

And here's why: Moark, the California-based company that produces Land O' Lakes eggs, was actually one of the companies involved in the egg recall, though their tainted eggs, sourced directly from Wright County Egg in Iowa, were supplied to retailers not in New York, but in Southern California.

In a statement released August 13, Moark said it "purchased finished carton product from Wright County Eggs for distribution to Southern California customers, primarily Kroger (Ralphs and Food 4 Less) and Albertsons. The Wright County eggs distributed by Moark are packaged under the following brand names: Albertson's, Mountain Dairy and Ralph's."

Large-scale sourcing of eggs—and all other foods for that matter—is a convoluted and tricky subject that involves jumping into a rabbit hole of sorts (or perhaps a mass-produced rabbit hole.)

Those tainted Moark eggs were packaged under three different brands and sold at four different market chains and it ends up that Moark sourced some of its eggs not only from some presumably depressed and definitely sick hens, but from a pretty unscrupulous corporation as well.

Wright County Egg has come under scrutiny not only for feeding hens contaminated feed and selling their contaminated feed to other operations, but the company has also been subject to labor violations and sexual harassment (of workers, not of hens), as reported by The New York Times.

Clearly this is something that could have been anticipated by America's first food industry investigative journalist Upton Sinclair, or included in the movie, Fast Food Nation. So is Moark, the company that produces the eggs enclosed in feel-good (ie: "all-natural, antibiotic-free") Land O' Lakes packaging, really as inncocent as the label would imply, or are those slightly more expensive and slightly higher quality eggs guilty by association?

The Farmer's Cow eggs come from six family-owned farms, though "family-owned" is a precarious term since Wright County Egg can also be described as such. There are pronounced differences between the types of operations of each party, though, and while I admit I'm not an expert in egg production, I'd dare to say that the Connecticut farmers' concentration on local sustainability and humane egg production significantly decreases the chances that their hens would contract salmonella in their ovaries and produce contaminated eggs.

The ethics of egg production and alternative commercial methods is the subject of an ongoing study by the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply. The study is assessing whether or not the large-scale commercial methods used at places like Wright County Egg are healthy for the hens, workers and consumers and how alternative methods like cage-free operations and perched nests could be a more ethical way of producing eggs.

In Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, (which will make your next grocery store experience totally surreal after reading it), Pollan discusses how mass-produced animal production is not transparent for a reason.

The reason, of course, is that the inhumane conditions under which animals are quickly grown via hormones and antibiotics and slaughtered on a production line would make most of us sick. So sick, in fact, that some of us may never buy mass-produced meat again, thereby reducing the profits of the industry.

And we all know that profit is the most important aspect of, well, everything...right?

Pollan, arguing that food costs involve more than a bottom line, advocates for a "glass abattoir," like that on Polyface Farms, a small-scale, polycultural farm in Virginia run by Joel Salatin, an alternative farmer with whom I share a healthy distrust for a government that's allowed hyper-capitalist industry to run amok.

On Salatin's farm, chickens live as freely as a farm animal ever could, and the result is a sustainable operation that produces thousands of eggs from happy chickens.

While Pollan's "glass abattoir" idea is more focused toward the slaughtering of animals, it could also be useful to each of us the next time we pick out a carton of eggs at the grocery store.

Indeed, if the back of the carton lists 20 different farms—in 20 different states--where the eggs may have come from, chances are you wouldn't want to feed your family those eggs. (And though I've haven't yet been lucky enough to eat an egg produced by a local farmer, I have to say that the Farmer's Cow eggs are much, much tastier than your average egg.)

Indeed, scrambling an egg is a lot more convoluted than any of us may have thought, but if enough of us start making more conscious decisions about our food purchasing—even if it starts as just a dozen eggs—chances are the food industry will have to evolve to become more conscious about their practices right along with us.