Grade A Eggs Earn Failing Food Safety Marks

The A-Team represented the best soldiers fighting to help the oppressed. An "A" on a report card means a student earned top scores. So "Grade A" eggs must be the best ovas money can buy. Right?

Not quite. In light of the recent recall of a half-billion eggs potentially contaminated with salmonella, the Wall Street Journal investigated what that Grade A stamp on eggs really means. Turns out it means not a whole lot when it comes to egg quality and safety. What it does do, however, is seriously mislead consumers.

For an egg to earn a USDA Grade A stamp, it needs to get checked by a "grader" at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) egg-packing facility. Graders look at the size and shape of the egg and make sure it's not cracked. And that's it. Those are the only requirements to get a Grade A stamp of approval. There's no inspection for bacteria like salmonella, and no checks for food safety of any kind. I had a harder time earning a passing score in a class nicknamed "Rocks for Jocks."

You see, the Grade-A stamp is just a clever advertising tool thought up by the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, a branch of the agency that facilitates "fair marketing" of U.S. agricultural products. Egg producers aren't required to have their eggs checked by graders at all, which is why some eggs don't have any stamps on them. But if producers do pay to get their eggs graded (and let's face it, the sweeping majority earn that easy A), they can charge shoppers more money. Consumers shell out extra dough for an egg they believe to be thoroughly inspected, and major producers like Wright County Egg's Jack DeCoster rack up the profits.

Wright County Egg, the source of 380 million of the half-billion recalled eggs, pays USDA graders about $22.70 an hour to "inspect" their eggs, plus an additional sum for every 30-dozen egg cases graded. Ironic that A-earning eggs contained diarrhea-inducing bacteria.

It's not just the Grade-A stamp that's misleading, though. It's the fact that there's a huge discrepancy between how the USDA grades meat and how it handles eggs' stamps of approval. "The USDA mark of inspection is only applied to meat products after inspectors in the plant have confirmed its safety and wholesomeness," Brian Mabry, a department spokesperson, told the Wall Street Journal. "This is one of our most power tools in protecting the public health." Eggs, on the other hand, just get a quick glance to make sure they're pretty, then graders mark 'em with an "A."

The USDA claims that its Grade-A system is A-OK because eggs technically don't fall under the agency's purview. While the USDA handles meat, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing egg safety. But the fact remains that most consumers don't know this fact, nor are they aware that the Grade A label is just for marketing purposes. If shoppers select eggs with a USDA Grade A stamp, they naturally expect them to be Grade A quality.

Misleading Grade A stamps are just more evidence that America's food safety system contains some serious cracks in it. It will take a lot of reform to ensure that a salmonella outbreak of this magnitude never happens again. In the meantime, sign our petition asking the USDA and FDA to ban egg producers from keeping hens in battery cages, a practice that increases the likelihood that chickens will develop salmonella.

Photo credit: David Benbennick via Wikimedia Commons