A Bad Egg for Every American?

Investigations into a multi-state outbreak of salmonella have triggered a major recall of eggs involving 17 states and 380 million eggs—that's one bad egg per person in the United States.

By now, many of us have developed an unnatural but necessary fear of French toast, cake, omelets, egg salad sandwiches and more. Investigations into a multi-state outbreak of salmonella have triggered a major recall of eggs involving 17 states and 380 million eggs (one egg per person in the United States, plus several omelets), and those numbers could continue to grow. The affected eggs were packaged as far back as mid-May—an entire season ago.

The outbreak involves only one producer—Wright County Egg of Galt County, Iowa—but it affects 15 different brands. This is exactly the type of industry consolidation that endangers consumers. Our food director, Patty Lovera, points out that ninety-five percent of all eggs in the United States come from facilities with 75,000 birds or more. Since the risk of contamination increases with overcrowded conditions, it’s easy to see how the large factory farm model fails consumers.

Food safety is serious business, and it gets significantly more difficult to ensure our food products are safe when we utilize a large-scale factory farm model to grow, process, distribute and sell our food across the country. The longer the distance between field and plate, the more chances there are for contamination. The more cows, chickens, or pigs are raised in overcrowded conditions, the greater the risk of illness.

This risk is prevalent throughout the factory farm model, so it’s not necessarily limited to particular types of food. In fact, the size and scale of our food production and distribution is so large that it takes four months to even determine that contamination has occurred. Even with the FDA implementing a new testing requirement for the egg industry, there’s still a lot more to do to tackle the problems posed by an industrialized egg production system.

Encouraging a system of smaller regionally-based farms will, at a minimum, decrease the number of people affected by an outbreak.

Incidentally, we asked our Food & Water Watch Facebook friends if they had recalled eggs in their refrigerators. We had many enthusiastic responses from people who get their eggs from local farmers or even their own backyards. We did not receive a single response from anyone who had recalled eggs. They already understand why the factory farm model doesn’t work.

Looking for a way to source food from regionally-based sustainable and organic farms? Try the Eat Well Guide!

-Rich Bindell