The Vital Voice

We’ve gotten a ton of questions lately asking if our eggs are affected by the salmonella recall.  We’re happy to say the answer is, “No!”  Hopefully, we’ll all benefit by more people taking a hard look at our food system today.  Here’s Matt’s take on the tainted egg issue, and who’s really to blame:

Take a moment to search the net for “Salmonella Egg Blame” and you’ll see a list of prime targets.  Among them:  ‘battery cages,’ ‘factory farming,’ ‘Wright County Egg,’ ‘industrial food production,’ ‘Hillandale Farms,’ ‘Jack DeCoster,’ ‘tainted chicken feed,’ ‘USDA,’ ‘FDA,’ the ‘US Senate’ and even ‘Barack Obama.’  The real culprit, however, is the US consumer.

Every decade for the past 150 years, the percentage of our income that we spend for food has decreased.  We now spend less than 10% of our income feeding ourselves compared to over 15% thirty years ago and over 50% before 1900.  To put this in more concrete terms, in 1875 it took 1,700 hours of work to purchase the annual food supply for a family.  Today it takes about 260 hours of work.  Oh, and in 1875 we spent 1% of our annual income on health care.  Today, we spend over 16%.  Not surprisingly, health care costs have tracked the food cost trend, but in the opposite direction.

Rose Acre Farms in Iowa; HSUS investigation Feb-Mar 2010 (Humane Society of the US)

We live in a food democracy.  Each day we vote with our wallets at grocery stores and markets throughout the US.  Over 90% of the eggs purchased by the US consumer are factory farmed, caged, non-organic, non pasture raised, non free range eggs selling for less than ten cents per egg.

To produce such an egg, producers must keep the hens in abysmal industrial farming conditions which the European Union and voters in the State of California have deemed inhumane and have outlawed.  Economics dictate that these hens are fed the lowest quality ingredients available, including at times meat and bone meal from – you guessed it – other dead chickens.  The total cost of this feed cannot exceed about two cents per hen, per day.  That’s like feeding humans for less than $1 per day.

In May of this year four college interns, sponsored by Whole Planet Foundation, took up residence in Pena Blanca, Guatemala with a mandate of living on $1 per day each.  This is what the poorest of poor live on worldwide.  The college students’ goal was to see if they could do the same – and experience the consequences.  They succeeded.  When I met up with them last month in their tiny dirt floor hut (think large battery cage), they had lost nearly 15 lbs each and had contracted a host of parasites and diseases including e. Coli poisoning, but they had survived on $1 per day each.  They are currently producing a documentary on their travails and those of Guatemala’s poor (more at www.onedollaraday.weebly.com).  They are also finishing up a regimen of heavy antibiotics, anti-parasites and anti-amoebas.  Sure, we can survive on $1 per day just as a hen can survive on two cents.  But, what’s the real cost?

Vital Farm eggs sell for around $5-$7 per dozen in stores and farmer’s markets.   Why so much?  Because it costs more to produce high quality food.  Our girls live outdoors, on healthy green pastures during daylight hours.  They eat native grasses and an organic feed ration that I’ve eaten by the handful (don’t try this with the feed given to hens laying ten cent eggs).  They run around, get exercise, take dust baths and generally get to act as the birds they are.  Thus, they produce an egg that has only 179 mg of cholesterol (vs. 200-280 for other eggs) and even contains vitamin C!

Hens being hens at Vital Farms.

We as consumers have no problem spending $1-$2 at home for our main entre (or a can of soda).  Why then do we have a problem buying $7/dozen eggs that will cost about $1.25 for a two-egg omelet?  Why do we believe that that omelet should cost $0.20 instead?

Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” defends his purchase of $8/dozen eggs in a recent Wall Street Journal article by stating that we should all “Pay more, eat less.”  If we buy ten cent eggs, we are to blame for the conditions that produce tainted foods.