An egg carton is great for keeping a dozen eggs grouped together, and for providing eggs stability and cushioning in transport. Beyond that, an egg carton is a very useful marketing tool. All that blank space can be filled up with information, promotional messages, and art. This is the fourth in a series of posts about the stuff printed on specific egg cartons.
Also in this series:
For this post, I went to a nearby supermarket and bought a carton of Locally Laid eggs. In my own coop, the Hipster Hens were in the midst of their autumnal molt and egg production was incredibly low. Given that we had some house guests who expected their morning scramble, I really did need to buy some eggs anyway. And in buying the eggs I also got a carton to blog about. So, I killed two birds with one stone, right? Please don’t tell the Hipster Hens I was talking about killing birds.
Locally Laid is a Minnesota-based, family owned and run egg company that has recently expanded into Iowa and Indiana. Jason and Lucie Amundsen started Locally Laid Egg Company in 2012 to provide pasture-raised eggs to local markets and as proponents and practitioners of “Middle Ag”. My backyard flock of Hipster Hens currently tops out at 26 birds. Cal-Maine Foods, the nation's largest egg producer, the last time anybody counted, had around 26 million hens. Locally Laid has around 1800 laying hens. Middle Ag. Get it?
If you like to know as much as possible about where your food comes from, then you appreciate transparency from food companies about how their product was produced. Like nearly every egg producer, Locally Laid Egg Company, provides a plethora of information about its eggs on its website. But Locally Laid has taken one giant step beyond most egg companies: Lucie Amundsen has written an informational, humorous, and very personal book about how she and her husband created this unique egg company. The book, like the company, is called “Locally Laid”. It’s a good read—I reviewed it here about a year ago.
I contacted Locally Laid prior to writing this post and asked if they would be willing to answer a few questions. Disappointingly, they never responded to my query. I honestly expected to hear from this relatively small, local company that’s doing so many things right.
The carton is devoid of any sort of pictorial art except for an abstract picture of a chicken who has just laid an egg. The logo chicken’s name is LoLa, and that’s also the name of every hen in the Locally Laid flock. The Locally Laid folks chose LoLa as the universal name because it’s short for “Locally Laid”. And, according to the website, they also like that Kink’s song. The words “Get Locally Laid!” appear in large font in the upper right corner of the carton. At first blush, this seems like an unintentional double entendre. But, in fact, the website makes it clear that the double entendre is completely intentional and is just one example of the humor this company employs as a mischievous and clever marketing strategy.
The other large design element to appear on the top of the carton is an orange circle proclaiming the eggs to be one dozen large, grade AA, free range eggs. Eggs are sized based on a scale developed by the US Department of Agriculture. Large eggs weigh 2 ounces. The egg grading system, as I explained in a previous post in this series, was also created by the USDA and is essentially a measure of egg freshness. The highest classification, 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.”
“Free Range” is also a term defined by the USDA and requires that the hens have “continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle. The outdoor area may be fenced and/or covered with netting-like material.” It’s a standard with a lot of leeway. Under the USDA definition, free range hens could spend their day foraging for bits of plants, bugs and worms in a pasture. Or they could be packed into a small outdoor pen with a concrete floor. So, what’s the story with the LoLa hens?
This statement, also on the top of the carton, helps answer that question. The question that this statement leaves open is exactly when and how long the “pasture season” is, and what sort of outdoor access the hens have in the “non-pasture” season.
The “Minnesota Grown” program is a statewide partnership between the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Minnesota farmers to get local agricultural products from local farmers to Minnesota consumers. You may ask, why is local food better? Well, logically, eggs, vegetables, or anything else that hasn’t been shipped halfway across the country will be fresher, thus will look better, taste better, and have more nutrients. And it’s better for the planet because it requires so much less energy to get it from the farm to your table. Plus, it supports the local economy and local communities. The Locally Laid website talks about how their hens are raised on local partner farms and those farms get their corn from their neighbors, and use a local mill to process the corn into chicken feed. The mill hires local people as workers—thus the money from egg sales is recycled over and over within the local economy. Within that context, they tell about one of their partner farmers who “was able to buy the farm he had been renting for years based on the strength of this Locally Laid contract. This will make a generational difference for his family.”
“GMO”, in case you don’t know, is the abbreviation for “genetically modified organism”. It means exactly what it sounds like it means: A GMO has undergone a genetic modification from its original form. The Locally Laid folks obviously think GMO’s are bad. Others would vociferously argue that not only are GMO’s safe, they are actually good for us and good for the planet. My perusal of this argument has led me to come down firmly on the side of “it depends”.
You need to bear in mind that regular old “non-GMO” corn has been genetically modified from it’s wild teosinte ancestor. And chickens have been genetically modified from their wild jungle fowl predecessors. In both of these examples, the genetic modification happened accidentally in nature, not purposefully by scientists. But while the process may be different, the logistics are exactly the same. Genes are composed of DNA and genetic change occurs when the order of the four chemical base pairs that make up the DNA molecule get switched around. This can occur either accidentally or purposefully—either way, genetic modification has taken place.
Some purposefully genetically modified organisms may be bad. That doesn’t make all GMO’s bad. It would be the same logic to say that poison ivy is bad, and since poison ivy is a plant, all plants are bad.
So, specifically, is GMO corn bad? There are a number of genetic modifications that have been made to GMO corn. One of them, “Roundup Ready” corn, has been altered so it can grow in the presence of glyphosate, the active chemical in the herbicide Roundup. Glyphosate is a chemical that kills almost all plants. Corn producers argue that spraying Roundup once during the growing season, compared to tilling the crop several times to kill weeds, reduces their carbon footprint and is also better for the soil. Roundup Ready corn also produces higher yields, allowing farmers to more easily produce food for a hungry planet. In addition, Roundup has been touted as less toxic and less carcinogenic than some of the herbicides that were being applied to corn prior to the advent of Roundup Ready corn. On the negative side, Roundup itself may be carcinogenic. One internationally respected organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, has deemed glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Also, as more and more crops are genetically modified to a Roundup Ready version, more and more Roundup is applied to crops. As Roundup becomes ubiquitous in the environment, it is only a matter of time before weeds, through random genetic mutation, start producing Roundup tolerant versions of themselves. Once you have enough Roundup tolerant “superweeds”, Roundup Ready crops become a moot point, and farmers will go back to their old pre-Roundup practices.
There are other types of GMO corn that are drought-tolerant and that produce their own insecticides. As with Roundup Ready corn, there are promoters and detractors; good attributes and bad attributes. And the whole situation becomes so complex that it begs for (and will get) its own blog post.
But the bottom line is that by implying that all GMO corn is bad, as is the case with the egg carton statement, all GMO’s get a bad reputation. And that they do not deserve.
Aside from the fact that “Micro-brood” is a clever use of words, it’s also an important concept. As the flock size and density go up, so does incidence of aggressive pecking behavior which can ultimately result in cannibalism – hens are literally pecked to death and eaten by their flock mates. Some flock owners try to control pecking by “beak trimming”, a painful procedure that may result in life-long chronic pain for the hen. Smaller flocks and more space solves the problem as well, and is the humane alternative to slicing into a hen’s beak.
Another problem with large flocks is the flock panic reaction. A loud noise or some other surprise can cause hens to panic. The entire flock can actually stampede. If the flock is in a crowded indoor situation, the hens can only run until they reach the nearest wall, then they pile up. Eventually the pile of chickens will untangle itself, but often the chickens at the bottom of the pile will have suffocated.
A third problem with large flocks is the increased likelihood of disease and parasite transmission. In addition to maintaining small flocks, Locally Laid solves the disease and parasite problem by frequently rotating their hens onto fresh pasture.
Finally, we find this quote from food writer Michael Pollan. His point is that eating real, fresh, whole, local food is better than eating the stuff you find in a can or in the freezer section that’s been pumped up with guar gum, carrageenan, hydrolyzed vegetable protein or some other manufactured chemical substance. Does this quote over-simplify the dilemma of modern processed food and the effect it has on our bodies and on our planet? Of course! It’s the printed version of a sound bite! But you have to bear in mind that this is an egg carton, not a book—there’s only so much room to write stuff! Michael Pollan also said, “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.” I have absolutely no problem pronouncing “Locally Laid”.
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