So I’m sure you’ve heard about the massive egg recall. Eggs are contaminated with salmonella, and hundred of millions of dozens have been recalled. Over 1500 cases of illness have been confirmed.
What you don’t know? The owner of Wright farms, ostensibly a god-fearing Christian man who gives tons of money to the Christian institution Hyles-Anderson College, has a long history of safety and labor violations at his farm.
In order to get us the cheapest eggs possible, he uses migrant and illegal workers, who are forced to labor in appalling conditions. Ammonia so strong that Department of Agriculture workers were hospitalized. Asbestos exposure. Denying workers access to doctors. Rape.
How cheap are these eggs, then?
He’s been fined. Because that’s all the government does in these cases- slap on a fine but don’t actually follow up on the requirement.
What are we eating? All I want to do is serve my family a nice, wholesome, frugal breakfast. All I want to do is bake up a pan of brownies or mix up some mayonnaise. But at what cost?
Eggs are healthy, and a staple around here. Eggs are one of the first dishes I teach my children to cook, around age 6 or 7. My 9 year old daughter cooks up eggs even better than I do (I’ve never mastered sunny-side-up but she is a whiz!)
But, it’s not healthy to eat foods that come at such a cost. It is not healthy to feed my children eggs from an empire built, in part, on the illegal labor of other children (oh, that’s another fine he was levied. Child labor violations.)
Animals are food, but that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want with them. We must be good stewards and ever respectful of God’s creation, even if that creation is ultimately destined for our tables and our stomachs. And, aside from the human cost, the cost to the animals is too high.
Hens are fed ground up feathers and bone meal. At Wright farms, they are kept in battery cages. Because their daily living conditions are so appalling, they are given antibiotics to help them grow and keep them from dying. Now the USDA is talking about giving chickens salmonella vaccines.
Salmonella is not the problem, but rather the symptom. Feeding chickens unnatural feed (and eating bone meal is not natural for chickens), farms so big with working conditions so poor that eggs sit in rat droppings, tended by overworked, undertrained caretakers, with no regard for the chicken as a creation, not just a commodity, are the problems. And no vaccination program is going to fix those problems.
So where does that leave me? I haven’t been buying the battery farmed eggs. My eggs are cage-free vegetarian fed, antibiotic free. But I’m pretty sure that they are factory farmed, too. Cage free doesn’t mean the birds frolic in pastures, eating bugs. I’m still working out the ethics of food consumption. Balancing what I wish for with our budget reality. Frankly, I cannot pay $5 for a dozen eggs.
But we can’t afford salmonella, either. We can’t afford to look the other way when we know people are being hurt by Wright farms, their employer. We can’t afford to ignore what is right in favor for what saves us the most money.
I have been trying out Ener-G egg replacer, a vegan egg substitute, in my baking. I bought it as part of our emergency supply, and once I did the math I’ve found that Ener-G is cheaper than an egg. One box is the equivalent of 9 dozen eggs. So, in a way we are reducing our consumption.
What kind of eggs do you eat? Has the recall changed your buying habits, and is that for ethical reasons, safety reasons, or both?
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Here’s a link to a more detailed list of the health violations at the farms:
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/08/30/mice-maggots-manure-tied-to-egg-recalls/
And according to this article, the toll of people sickened by the eggs (literally, I think we’re all sickened in the figurative sense) is over 1500 now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11134497
It also says that the source of the bacteria was probably the chicken feed (Am I surprised? Shake your head no!)
Thank you for this post. I’m sharing it with my husband.
We have a tiny flock of hens who free-range–truly, they are almost better mousers than my cats!–and lay wonderful eggs. When we sold eggs, it was for $2 a dozen. I can’t imagine how one could justify selling them for $5 a dozen…to do so is unconscionable.
Now that’s interesting, because we have lots of farms around Houston. I can get grass fed organic beef for $4-5 a pound if I order in bulk, but eggs are $4-5 a dozen, too!
We can buy local for $1.50 – 2.00. If our city council will get their heads out of their butts and pass a much-needed city ordinance, then residents can keep up to six chickens themselves, which we would most certainly do on our .9 acre. *fingers crossed*
This is a problem that we are still working on here.
I can’t find eggs that cheap either here in Austin. Although, I have only been here 4 weeks and haven’t looked hard enough yet.
You can also use flax seeds as an egg replacer in baking and you get the health benefits, too.
“for 2 Whole Eggs in baking: Grind 2 heaping tablespoons of flaxseeds in a coffee grinder, then whisk with 5-6 tablespoons very hot water, add this mixture to the batter where you would add the eggs. ”
Courtesy of this book: http://www.wholelifenutrition.net/id5.html
I buy the organic, free-range etc eggs as well – it’s just that I ONLY buy them when I KNOW we’ll be using them (for example, the same day I buy the cake mix) because of the price tag. They’re cheaper here in Denver than the $5 you pay in Houston – I always buy at Kroger (I never ever ever buy anything that can spoil from W*M) and generally pay $4 or so. Because of the cost, they aren’t an omni-present item in our fridge, but having just myself and DH to feed makes it easy to go without.
http://www.eggsafety.org/mediacenter/alerts/73-recall-affected-brands-and-descriptions
Here’s a list of recalled brands. While the FDA says they aren’t adding to the list anymore, I think it’s useful to hang on to. Their source for eggs has a 30-year track record of ignoring and exploiting the health and safety of their workers, hens, products, and customers. And when confronted, they consistently try to make the problem “go away” with money. The fact that the government *has* to force them to change their ways is reason enough for me not to want my money going to them. That means I’m not going to buy eggs from the brands on the recall list anymore.
thanks Rachel!
Your link to reports of child labor violations does not mention child labor.
I have bought cage-free eggs for years. I don’t have any illusions that these birds live joyful worry-free lives, but I started buying them when I found out a horrifying fact about the cheapest eggs. Housed in battery cages, the bored hens (who aren’t exactly avian Einsteins, but who have enough intelligence and curiosity to forage all day in nature and on traditional farms) mutilate each other. The solution? Cut off their beaks.
At least I can reasonably hope that the hens laying my eggs don’t get their beaks cut off.
As with salmonella vaccines, hens having beaks is not the problem. Hens bored to the point of insanity (bird-brain version, anyway) by unnatural conditions God never meant for them are the problem.
They work out to about 20 cents an egg. I still shy away from the ones that cost 50 cents an egg or more. That makes them more expensive than most meat, ounce for ounce of protein. (A large egg is about an ounce.)
If you scroll down on the child labor link you’ll find:
I buy the HEB eggs in the clear carton, which are around 20 cents an egg too (and WIC approved!).
The business with the pecking is part of where the term “hen-pecking” comes from. Most animals will become violent with each other when living in overcrowded conditions. The part that’s especially disturbing with chickens is that they don’t stop with pecking and will actually turn to cannibalism. At least that’s what chicken farmers have told me.