The Great Egg Recall and the Little Farmer

What a horror this egg recall is. It highlights the complete fiasco that is our mass production industrial food system. The Wall Street Journal has a number of great articles regarding the recall and some important things you should know. For example, Grade A eggs are not what you think. To learn more, read this: 'Grade A' Egg Stamp Isn't What It Seems. To learn about conditions at one of the plants at the center of the recall, read this: Flies, Birds, Mice Found at Egg Plant.

Where do you turn for safe food when the industrial farms and government aren’t keeping you safe? The small farmer? I would like to give that an unqualified, absolute yes. I believe that many small farmers are truthful and ethical in the raising and selling of their food. But not all of them are.

Take for instance Rainbow Meadow Farms (RMF) in Snow Hill, NC. I bought eggs and meat from them weekly for over two years. I paid premium prices for this supposed pasture raised, antibiotic-free, hormone-free food. Then I took a tour of RMF. I was in the pasture with the egg laying chickens. I picked up the eggs. Those eggs didn’t look like the eggs I was purchasing from RMF at the farmers market. A few other things seemed off to me as well, so I started to investigate and made my concerns known to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (DACS). Between their investigation and mine we uncovered lots of things, but I will stick to eggs for now. DACS found that RMF was purchasing cage-free eggs from an egg service and then repackaging them without the necessary government approvals/authorizations. Cage-free eggs! My ethical concerns aside (I want eggs from happy pastured chickens), cage-free chickens are not pasture raised. They live in cramped conditions where disease spreads, requiring the use of antibiotics. The eggs aren’t as nutritionally healthy as pasture raised. These eggs should be less expensive than what I was paying, as they are less costly to raise. To be fair, I do think that RMF also sold the eggs from the pasture, but I sure didn’t receive them often.

So what did RMF do? They repacked the cage-free eggs and passed them off as their own without the needed government authorization. There are many problems with this. First, the health concern, especially in light of this egg recall. By repacking eggs, there is no way to track the eggs in case they are recalled. Purchasers are completely in the dark, as they think their eggs are from RMF.

Second, RMF broke the law. They did not have the government authorizations and inspections that are required when repacking. Unfortunately, it seems that the government is unable to punish them, as there is only one egg inspector in all of North Carolina and he can’t be at every turn overseeing their every move in order to gather the needed evidence.

Third, as stated in the Wall Street Journal articles above, egg inspection doesn’t always mean a lot.

Fourth, I and many, many of my friends paid premium prices for a substandard product. I may just ask for my money back for the sake of going through the motions, but with the amount of deceit I uncovered regarding this farm, I don’t expect to succeed. Who knows, though, they could turn over a new leaf.

What are you supposed to do?

1. Purchase from a farmer that is excited to have visitors at any time with no notice.

2. Walk the pasture and ask to see all of the pasture where the chickens are feeding.

3. Ask to see the chicken feed and its label. Make sure that antibiotics are not in the feed.

Transparency is the key. RMF put on a good show when I visited, but they did not satisfy these three steps. I tried to visit prior to the RMF farm tour but was gently rebuffed each time. If only I would have forced the issue. It would have saved my friends and me a lot of money.

Comments

[bluegal]

Thanks for posting the specifics on this. It's kind of demoralizing to imagine a small farm that would do this... but it's a good reminder for me to research my sources and not just take them at their word. Unfortunately.