Here’s
the cool and unique thing about eggs: They come with their own container - the
eggshell. Granted bananas and potatoes
have their peel, and oranges and melons have their rind, but what other animal-sourced
food is prepackaged? I can’t think of
any!
Of
course, you seldom buy just one egg.
They usually come in batches of a dozen, and those dozen eggs need to be
contained in something – hence the egg carton.
In addition to keeping eggs grouped together, a carton provides
stability and cushioning in transport; an important thing - we’re talking about
a product that is “as fragile as eggs”, after all. An egg carton also provides lots of blank space
that can be filled up with information, promotional messages, and art. And that’s as important a carton function as
either of the others. Selling, after all
is about merchandising, and merchandising is about branding. An eggshell is pretty anonymous. When you look at an eggshell, you don’t learn
a whole lot about the hen that laid the egg.
It’s not like she has the ability to stamp her initials or trademark on
the egg as she lays it. But then the hen
really doesn’t care too much about branding.
The egg company cares though, thus all those words and pictures on a
carton.
In
this series of articles I’m going to take a look at those words and pictures. Do you actually read your egg cartons? I’m going to guess that you pay attention to
the name and the art and that you don’t think too much about anything
else. That would make you pretty normal.
Or maybe you’ve read some of the fine print and wondered what it really meant. I’ve wondered, so I decided to get to the
bottom of it. I went to my local grocery
store, bought a few carton of eggs (yeah, I know I have chickens and need eggs
like a fish needs a bicycle, but this was a project!) Then I set out to find out what I could about
all the information printed there.
It’s
only fair that I start this series by talking about my own egg cartons. Yup, I have cartons, and those cartons have
labels. Back when my first hens
started laying their first eggs, I began to put eggs into cartons and hand them
out to friends. And those cartons needed a label! A disparaging article about
the growing backyard chicken movement was making the rounds about that time.
The article disapprovingly talked about "hipsters with hens". So I
borrowed that phrase, and gave it a positive twist. My hens became the Hipster
Hens, and the egg cartons labels proclaimed "Hipster Hen Wonder
Eggs".
The art on my first cartons was a whimsical picture by Wisconsin
artist Susan Martin called “Three Wise Chickens.” Last year my wife, Kathy, commissioned Susan
to do a portrait of four of my chickens as a birthday surprise for me. The picture of Snowball, Emily, and Courtney
the Silkies and Angitou the Golden Laced Polish entitled “Snowball and His Hens”
is the art I use on my cartons now and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is also the
Randy’s Chicken Blog Facebook profile picture.
Is this statement valid?
How do I know my hens are happy?
Well, folks, I just know –
they sure act like they’re happy. And
the cage-free part is true without a question.
Most laying hens still spend the totality of their lives in torture
chambers called “battery cages”. While a
few of my hens have spent some time in a broody crate, for the most part they
have lots of space to move around in large indoor coops. And when the weather’s
nice they’re outside.
There is more background information lurking behind these
three simple sentences than you can shake a stick at. Food safety is very important and it’s also
very regulated. To ease into a
discussion of the safe handling instructions, let’s start with the last two
words: ungraded eggs. What is egg grading anyway? What does it mean when grocery store eggs
carry a “Grade A” or “Grade AA” and why is it OK for Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs to
carry no such designation?
Egg grading is done by professional egg graders who work for
the US Dept. of Agriculture. Grade AA
eggs, according to the USDA website, “have
whites that are thick and firm; yolks that are high, round, and practically
free from defects; and clean, unbroken shells.”
Grade A eggs, “have characteristics of Grade AA eggs except that the
whites are ‘reasonably’ firm.” Grade B
eggs, “have whites that may be thinner and yolks that may be wider and flatter
than eggs of higher grades.” If you
think about it, you probably will realize that you’ve never seen Grade B eggs
in the grocery store. Grade B eggs are practically
never sold as whole shell eggs, but get dried, frozen, or put into other products. Note that the big difference between the egg
grades is that the egg whites become thinner and the yolk becomes bigger as the
grade goes down. As an egg ages, the yolk absorbs water from the white and
enlarges, at the same time the proteins in the egg white start to break down
and the egg becomes thinner. So egg
grade is mostly a function of how old the egg is.
Egg grading is a service that the USDA offers
to egg companies, but it isn’t mandatory. Most commercial egg companies choose to use
this service. The Hipster Hens are not
part of a commercial egg company and have opted out of that service. Nevertheless, Wonder Eggs are very, very
fresh.
Phew.
That was two paragraphs about two words.
Now let’s tackle the word “unwashed.”
The subject of egg washing really deserves its own blog post and someday
I’ll write one. In the meantime, here’s
a thumbnail. By law, commercial egg
companies in the US are required to wash the eggs they sell. Small “farm to table” type operations are
exempt from that law, hence Wonder Eggs are unwashed. The egg washing laws are in place because of
the fear of Salmonella. It’s a rational
fear – any product that comes from an animal can contain harmful bacteria. Studies have proven what any reasonable
person would expect: Washing eggs
reduces the number of bacteria on an eggshell.
Here’s the problem though – eggshells in their natural state have a
layer of “paint” called bloom that the hen
deposits on the eggshell surface right before she lays the egg. Washing the egg washes off the bloom, and
then the eggshell becomes porous to water and harmful bacteria. Washing an egg incorrectly can actually wash
bad bacteria right into the egg! That’s
why most countries don’t wash their eggs and some countries, like Britain,
actually have laws against egg
washing. The procedure for washing eggs
in the US is stringent and rigid to assure that bacteria isn’t being washed
into the eggs. And then to be doubly
sure that no bacteria will grow in the eggs after washing, the law stipulates
that eggs be transported and stored at refrigerator temperatures. Britain and all the European Union countries,
on the other hand, display their eggs on regular old room-temperature grocery
store shelves.
OK then.
We’ve managed to get through three words. What about the rest of the statement about
keeping the eggs in the fridge and cooking them well? Again, it’s all about being safe from
Salmonella and other bad bacteria. As a
retired microbiologist who spent a lot of years working in public health, I
have learned that it’s better to be safe than sorry when working with any
animal product be they eggs, meat, or dairy products. Any animal-sourced food that isn’t
pasteurized should be thoroughly cooked.
Salmonella can actually be inside
the egg since it’s possible for it to live in a hen’s oviduct and become
incorporated into the egg as the egg is being formed. In Britain, land of the unwashed,
unrefrigerated egg, there’s a legal requirement that egg producers vaccinate
their hens against Salmonella. There’s
no such law on the books in the US, so treat any eggs you cook as a possible
source of Salmonella regardless of where they come from.
So there you go. Should you ever come to possess a carton of
Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs, nothing on the carton label should be mysterious to
you. It’s probably more likely that the
eggs in your fridge came from the grocery story though, so I’ll talk about some
of them for the next few posts.
Also in this series:
Part 2 - ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs
Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs
Part 4 - Locally Laid
Part 5—Vital Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs
Part 2 - ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs
Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs
Part 4 - Locally Laid
Part 5—Vital Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs
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