Cracking Open the Lies Behind Egg Cartons

What's in a name? Well, if the name you're looking at is a food label, the answer is: not much.

As consumers become more and more aware of factory farm cruelty, it's a system they don't want to support. Poll after poll has shown that people are willing to pay more for food that comes from animals who are humanely raised, and they're led to believe that an extra dollar and a "humane" or "free range" label means something. (Kristen Ridley has a nice breakdown over on the Sustainable Food blog of some of the most common offenders in misleading, unregulated food labels.)

But the truth is that companies can — and do — write pretty much whatever they want on packaging, especially when it comes to animal products. In the U.S., 95 percent of eggs still come from battery-caged hens, yet there are no government standards in place to prevent those cartons from being labeled "natural" or even "animal-friendly."

The Animal Legal Defense Fund and Compassion Over Killing have filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration calling for regulations that mandate full disclosure of egg production methods right on the carton, including a label for "eggs from caged hens."

"What’s the egg industry trying to hide?” asked Compassion Over Killing executive director Erica Meier. “If factory farmers really believe it’s appropriate to confine birds in battery cages where they can barely move, they should be willing to let consumers know about it.”

And slaughterhouses should have glass walls, as Paul McCartney famously said. That's not likely to happen anytime soon, but a little truth in labeling shouldn't be too much to ask. The European Union and Australia already require cartons to disclose that their eggs come from caged hens.

Truth in labeling should also cover terms like "cage free" and "free range." It's not some big mystery that people are picturing birds with a bit of room to roam and access to the outdoors, not a warehouse crammed with thousands of birds who have all of one square foot of living space. In the literal sense, that's "cage free," but it's deceptive. Add a little patch of dirt off the side of the warehouse, that some of the birds might be able to access, and it's labeled "free range." Hardly the Old MacDonald's farm on people's minds or that's pictured on the package.

Since the government hasn't defined these terms, the agriculture industry has.

There are a number of third-party certification programs, ranging from Certified Humane, which doesn't allow confinement for egg-laying hens and requires litter for dust bathing, but not access to the outdoors, to the Animal Welfare Institute's Animal Welfare Approved seal, which is more stringent, but only granted to family farms representing a tiny share of the market. For the average consumer, who is supposed to be protected by government regulations, these programs do little to ease the sense of confusion in the supermarket.

The recent salmonella outbreak in eggs highlighted how factory farms are allowed to get away with murder ... and I don't mean that as a figure of speech — besides the animals being killed, food safety issues can be deadly for humans. We need more transparency in the animal agriculture industry to stop the suffering. Tell the FDA to start by setting meaningful standards for labeling eggs.

Photo credit: greebile