This is a great rundown. I noticed what I think may be good news at my local supermarket in the past few weeks: the price of regular store-brand eggs is skyrocketing. It went from $1.69/dozen to over $3/dozen, meaning the price difference between regular and organic eggs is now pretty slim. I’d wanted to buy the organic eggs, but they tended to sit longer on the shelf, to the point that they were hard to separate (not to mention lousy for poaching).

Now, I assume many of my neighbors who, like me, are both knee-jerk do-gooders and cheapskates, will choose the organics.

A really good article. The labels can be very confusing and as pointed out in the article, many are unregulated. When buying eggs in the grocery, organic is the best route. It’s a well regulated and well defined label. If buying direct, talk to the farmer and when you go home crack an egg open and look at it.

eamonm,
Is there a standard used by a farmer selling through a farmer’s market that is equal to the ‘organic’ as defined by the FDA? Or do you even need to worry about this given the nature of farmers using farmer’s markets?

Did that make sense?

Good question. The only certification you’ll see at markets will be organic certification. Many markets ask about farming practices in the application process. Farmers market shoppers are an inquisitive lot. They ask the farmers a lot of questions about their farming practices. So while there is no third party certification beyond organic, the nature of the market does create an informal stamp of approval.

I just spotted this excellent piece about egg-laying chickens in Britain. It says that battery egg production will be illegal in all of Europe in 2012. Anyone want to wager a bet when this will happen in the US?

I think it will take a bit longer in the US. But watch the big privately owned groceries like Wegman’s in Western NY. Wegman’s owns an egg farm which supplies its groceries. The company has started a cage free program within its own business. If Wegman’s goes 100% cage free then the rest of the industry will follow about 5 years later. Wegman’s and the other large privately owned groceries are way ahead of the publicly traded groceries.

I enjoyed the article and thought it shared some important information. I did notice, however, a common mistake about egg color: “Brown eggs come from chickens with brown feathers, and white eggs come from chickens with white feathers.”

That is not correct. Many brown feathered hens lay white eggs. Many white feathered hens lay brown eggs. Leghorns, whether they are white or brown feathered, lay white eggs. Rhode Island Reds and Rhode Island Whites both lay brown eggs. And, what’s even more obvious is that hens come in many different colors of feathers, not just white and brown.

Kelly is hardly alone in perpetuating this error. The American Egg Board trivia page reports the same misinformation. The reason the error continues, as far as I can guess, is that the statement is mostly true if and only when commercial egg operations are considered. The white Leghorn, unlike brown feathered varieties of that breed, has been bred to be an egg machine, so indeed nearly 100% of white eggs sold by commercial egg factories are laid by white feathered birds, and no other breed of white egg laying hens are used in battery cage/industrial farming system. Brown eggs come from commercial strains of several different breeds or sex linked crossbreds, almost all of which do have some shade of brown feathers.

While there is no connection between egg color and feather color, there is some connection between egg color and ear lobe color. With few exceptions, if a hen has white ear lobes, she will lay white eggs; if a hen has red earlobes, she will lay brown eggs. The Leghorn breed, including all varieties and feather colors, have white earlobes and lay white eggs.

Among the red ear-lobed hens that lay white eggs are some French breeds ( Crevecoeurs, Houdans), some of the bantams (booted, Japanese), and some American varieties that were developed in the 20th century that are among the rarest breeds in the world (Lamona, Holland).

Silkies are another exception to the rule, as they have turquoise earlobes and lay light tinted eggs. Araucanas and Ameraucanas don’t fit either, since they lay green eggs, but don’t have green ear lobes.

Thanks John, the beauty of the internet that we all love here at Culinate is that the information does not just get printed and filed away. It can grow, learn and continue to educate. Now only if we could get the American Egg Board to update their own trivia section.

This was a very helpful article, as I am usually left scratching my head in confusion while attempting to purchase a simple carton of huevos. Alas, there is no such thing as a simple carton of huevos, but at least now I am much more egg-savvy than I was before reading your informative piece.

So, when not blessed with pastured eggs direct from a person with egg-laying chickens, what do you buy? Is there any particular brand/farm of local organic eggs that you prefer?

I occasionally get a handful of the excellent, bright orange-yolked beauties from a chicken-having friend, but not enough to support my relatively high level of egg use.

Thanks for the good information.

A very good question. The short answer is, I’m going to stick to the brand I know to be local and organic.

Last winter, when I couldn’t buy eggs at a farmers market, I noticed that a brand of supermaket organic eggs I buy varied from week to week in terms of how fresh they seemed and how orange their yolks were.

Overall, though, I have not noticed a great deal of difference between the three or four store brands we have tried. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they are not terribly fresh. I can tell because the yolks are not as firm, not as upright when you crack the egg into the frying pan.

My household recently went back to store eggs after a long season of eggs from the farmers market. When my husband cracked one the other morning and looked at the flabby, pale yellow yolk, he was very disappointed and said with uncharacteristic drama, “What are we going to do now?”