Organic Eggs from Dirty, Crowded, Indoor Chickens

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. The Cornucopia Institute, an organization that advocates for family-scale farming, recently released a video to go along with its "Scrambled Eggs" report. The images it depicts from supposed "organic" egg operations are enough to make folks lose their omelets.

When most consumers picture organic egg farms, they likely think of happy, little birds in a lush, green yard pecking at plump insects. The Cornucopia Institute's two-year-long investigation into organic egg farms shows that in many cases, that scene couldn't be further from the truth.

The video uncovers the ugly stat that about 80 percent of the market's certified organic eggs come from massive operations that don't look much different from non-organic factory farms. "After almost two years of research, we were really disturbed to find that there really is a corporate, agribusiness, factory farmed takeover of the organic egg industry well underway," Mark Kastel, Cornucopia Institute's codirector, said in the video. The clip then went on to show what these "organic" hen houses look like — thousands upon thousands of birds crammed tightly into a shabby building with little room to move. The scene reminds one of a New York City subway station during rush hour — only with chickens. (Take a look for yourself after the break).

The sad truth is that even though farms are required to provide hens with outdoor access in order to earn organic certification, many of them find ways to skirt the regulation. As the Cornucopia Institute reports, in one instance, an egg operation owned two buildings that contained more than 15,000 birds each. Each building offered one 2 ft.-by-2 ft. door to the outdoors — the farm argued that this tiny space counts as outside access. Other large-scale operations featured similar kinds of  "outdoor access," with only three-to-five percent of their birds ever stepping foot outside. Some egg producers considered screened-in porches as "outdoor access," while other farms provided zero access to the nature at all.

If you're like most consumers, you're undoubtedly ticked that you've been shelling out more dough for "organic" eggs that actually came from a factory farm. But instead of hurling the offending ovas out the window, let's use our purchasing power to change the situation. The Cornucopia Institute produced a handy Organic Egg Scorecard which ranks egg producers based on their hen-rearing practices. Several organic egg producers are actually doing a really great job and going above-and-beyond the standards, and they should be rewarded through our shopping.

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is planning on holding a hearing on Oct. 25th-28th to debate stronger organic regulations to ensure that hens get outdoor access. You can attend the meeting or mail in a proxy letter through the Cornucopia Institute's Web site. You can also sign our petition asking the NOSB to make animal welfare standards a crucial part of organic certification.

Photo credit: observing life via Flickr