A Carton of Eggs: Part 5—Vital Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs

An egg carton: Great for keeping a dozen fragile eggs grouped together and cushioned.  Also, great as a blank canvas that can be filled with written and visual messages.  This is the fifth in a series of articles about all that info printed on an egg carton.

Also in this series:

Part 1 - Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs

Part 2 – ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs

Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs

Part 4 – Locally Laid Eggs

For my fifth venture into egg carton messaging, I picked up a dozen eggs from Vital Farms at my local Whole Foods.  I first heard about Austin, Texas based Vital Farms when I ran across their very amusing and spot-on ad on the net.  In addition to being really funny, this ad calls “bullsh*t” (their word choice!) on all those eggs labeled “cage free.”  When you buy eggs with “cage-free” stamped on the carton, you probably think you’re doing the right thing.  Cage-free eggs are a huge improvement from eggs that come from hens living in tiny, cramped battery cage torture chambers.  But as Vital Farms points out in its ad, hens laying cage free eggs probably live in one square foot of space in a cramped barn and never get to go outside.  Vital Farms advertises its eggs as “pasture raised” and guarantees that each hen gets 108 square feet of outdoor space.  These seemed like my kind of eggs, so I bought some and then took a look at the information on the carton.

The top of the carton shows drawings of two hens and a few explanatory words and phrases:  The company, “Vital Farms, est. 2007”; the product, “Organic Pasture-Raised (Vital Farms also sells Non-GMO Pasture-Raised and Al Fresco Pasture-Raised eggs); and the contents, “12 Eggs – Large Grade A Eggs.”  In addition, there are the phrases, “Girls on Grass” and "Free to Forage.”  More about those later.  The remaining space is filled with simple drawings of flowers, plants, and vines.  The botanical design follows the same rustic theme that every other egg carton I’ve written about or ever seen in a supermarket follows.  Consumers obviously like to be presented with rural imagery when they shop for eggs.  We have seen though, that the hens that laid the eggs in the cartons festooned with rural imagery have often spent their entire lives in a cage or locked indoors.  What did the Vital Farms hens experience?  Read on and I’ll tell you what I could find out! 

There are a few phrases scattered around the carton that seem to be mostly about the Vital Farms copy writers having a good time.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Happy copy writers are okay, actually, as long as the hens are happy, too.  “Free to Forage” is one example of a pleasant little phrase that just sort of tumbles off your tongue.  But does it mean anything?  Well, yes. Vital Farms' eggs are all pasture raised.  “Pasture-Raised,” which is incorporated right into the name, is the main selling point. And that's the reason, Vital Farms will tell you, why their eggs are better than your average egg.  “Free to Forage” is just another clever way to say that the Vital Farms hens are happily wandering around a pasture every day.  Then there’s “Girls on Grass.”  Another happy little word nugget!  And again, it’s the very same story—these hens spend their days hanging out in the great outdoors.

And then there’s the phrase “Tended by hand on small family farms,” which conjures in my mind an image of a woman in a gingham dress and white apron scattering grain in the hen yard.  Kudos to the copy writer who created this enchanting phrase.  I assume what it really means is that the economics of smaller flocks dictates less automation.  If you only have a couple thousand hens at a given farm as opposed to the few million that a factory farm might have, you probably opt for a less fancy machine for distributing the chicken feed, for example.  Instead of a computer-controlled auger system, you maybe pull a wagon-load of chicken feed out to the chicken barn behind your tractor.  Can you use a tractor and still say that you're tending your chickens by hand?  I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.  And are there really no bachelor farmers?  They say all the farmers have families, and again, I’m just going to trust them.

On the back of the carton there’s a whole string of certification labels.  The one on the left is the USDA Organic label.  Not all Vital Farms eggs have the USDA Organic label on the carton.  As they explain on their website, they follow the tenets of organic farming in producing all of their eggs.  But since hens do need supplemental feed in addition to their pasture forage, the difference is that the hens producing the “Organic Pasture Raised Eggs” are fed certified organic feed and the hens producing the “Al Fresco Pasture Raised Eggs” are fed less expensive feed that has not gone through the official certification process.  And that’s the only difference.  If you feel, with everything else being the same, that a certified organic diet for the hens is an important thing, it's definitely worth it for you to spend the extra money to buy the eggs with the USDA Organic label.

This is a good place, though, for me to point out that not all egg brands carrying the USDA Organic label are pasture raised.  One of the requirements egg producers have to meet in order to qualify for the organic label is that their hens have access to fresh air and sunshine.  You would think that this requirement would demand that the hens be able to go outside.  Most organic egg producers interpret the rule this way and allow their hens into large runs or onto pasture. But a few producers skirt this regulation by providing a roofed concrete slab with screened walls. Fresh air certainly penetrates the screens, as does sunshine. But there’s no soil for the hens to scratch at or dust-bathe in, and the area is completely devoid of any kind of vegetation.  It’s not really outdoors at all—it’s a big indoor room!  While the egg producers engaging in this dishonest practice are few in number, they’re all large “factory farms” so they produce a bazillion eggs. 

It comes down to this:  Would you rather buy a carton of eggs laid by hens who spend their day foraging in a pasture like every Vital Farms hen does, or a carton of eggs from hens confined indoors with tons of other hens?  If you have a preference, you can’t rely the USDA Organic label to guide your choice.  Both cartons will carry it!  Last year, after years of review, the USDA was ready to change its rules to eliminate this loophole.  The same dishonest egg producers who keep their hens indoors lobbied to prevent the rule change and the USDA ultimately killed it.  (If you would like to find out the whole scoop on organic eggs, read my recent blog post “A Short History of Organic Eggs.”)

To the right of the USDA Organic label is another label that's a much better indicator of hen welfare.  The Certified Humane label appears on food products that meet the standards of Humane Farm Animal Care, an organization endorsed by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society of the United States.  Since there are no good federal government standards or certifications for animal welfare, there are a number of certifying organizations that have sprung up to fill that void. There is, of course, a gradient in the stringency of the certifications of the various organizations and differences in what they cover.  I listed the certifying agencies and the gradient of stringency in a previous blog post. Certified Humane falls somewhere in the upper half of that gradient.  The Certified Humane regulations mandate that flocks designated as “Pasture-Raised” be provided year-round pasture at no more than 1000 birds per 2.5 acres and that the fields must be regularly rotated.  With pasture rotation and that amount of space, the pastures should never become overgrazed and the hens should always be able to peck away at green stuff to their heart’s content.  Vital Farms locates all of its farms in the southern part of the US in order to meet the requirement for year-round pasture.  There are any number of egg companies with hens on pasture in the northern part of the country, but obviously, in the wintertime those hens are indoors.  If you live in the north, your dilemma is choosing between local eggs from hens that are confined indoors in the winter due to dictates of the climate, or non-local eggs such as Vital Farms where the hens get to be on pasture year-round. 

Vital Farms makes a big deal about the 108 square feet of pasture that each of their hens gets.  And that’s okay.  It is truly a humane and sustainable flock density.  But why 108?  Well, the Certified Humane standard is 1000 birds per 2.5 acres.  If you do the math, that comes out to 108 square feet per chicken.  That standard, officially the “British Free-Range Standard” was researched and developed by the Soil Association, a British sustainable farming organization founded in 1946 that determined 1000 chickens per hectare (a hectare is 2.5 acres) was the maximum allowable density to maintain healthy, sustainable, chemical-free pasture.  Chickens are allowed on a section of pasture for one to three weeks and as they forage, they fertilize and aerate the soil.  Then they’re moved to another section while that section regrows—a truly sustainable system that results in sustainable, healthy land and healthy, happy hens!

In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 2, which mandated better treatment for the hens that laid any eggs sold in California.  (I wrote a series of posts about Prop 2 and how it affected the egg industry.)  As a result of Prop 2 and other legislation enacted in California, any eggs sold there must comply with a number of standards regardless of if they were produced in California or somewhere else. The CA SEFS (California Shell Egg Food Safety) label on a carton indicates that the eggs in that carton meet that standard.

How do egg producers have to treat their hens to earn the right to that CA SEFS label?  The language in Prop 2 was vague—it simply required that hens have enough room to fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.  After Prop 2 passed, there was a lot of skirmishing between animal welfare advocates and large-scale factory-farm egg producers regarding what the actual space requirement should be.  Eventually, when the dust settled, the new regulations gave hens 116 square inches per bird.  Battery caged hens spend their lives with 67 square inches of space - a space about equivalent to two egg cartons. CA SEFS hens get not quite four egg cartons worth of space.  Pasture-raised eggs obviously have no problem meeting the requirements necessary for sale in California.

Vital Farms is clearly in the business of selling ideas as well as eggs.  That becomes apparent when you flip open the egg carton and find not only a dozen eggs, but also a lot more text.  Having filled the entire outside of the carton with their message, they still felt the need to say more.  This message needs no further explanation from me.

And then there’s this:

You’ve got to love a company that cares as much about selling ideas as selling eggs—that wants to be successful as a business enterprise, but also wants to save the planet.  Vital Farms is doing everything right!  Once enough of us are buying eggs from Vital Farms and other egg companies like them that produce humane and sustainable pasture-raised eggs, even the large factory-farm egg producers will take notice and change their practices.  And that would be great!  For all of us!  And the planet! And the hens!

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