Ye-HaWhole Foods' Eggs Examination
(Photo from sfgate.com)
Whole Foods is “happy to report that all of the eggs that you find in our stores are cage-free eggs.” Those of you regular Culinary Hatchet readers will recall from Battery Caged Chickin Pickin' that “Cage-free” hens are uncaged inside barns or warehouses, but are not required to have access to the outdoors, perches, or nesting boxes. Cage-free allows both beak cutting and forced molting through starvation. There is no third-party auditing. <Insert sound of loser buzzer!>
Now let’s take a look at the suppliers of eggs to Whole Foods that I found in my local Los Gatos store.
365 Chicken Eggs
Whole Foods’ “Everyday Value® and 365 Organic Everyday Value® products.” No detailed information on the Internet. What you see on the carton is what you get.
Gold Circle Farms Eggs
Gold Circle Farms is a division of Hidden Villa Ranch (which also sells products under the Horizon Organic brand) and purchases their eggs from cage-free egg farmers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and California. They, um, farm out, the transportation of their eggs.
They, of course, have pictures of children feeding chickens and pastured chickens on their web site.
Clover Stornetta Farms
Clover's cage-free eggs are certification by the American Humane Free Farmed program.
The eggs come from North Coast of California.
Petaluma Poultry
Rock Island and Judy’s Chicken Eggs
Both are brands of Petaluma Poultry, which, according to their web site houses 50,000 “cage-free" hens.[1] Petaluma Poultry has been in operation 26 years and were the first eggs in California to be third-party certified organic.[2] Whole foods sells their eggs both loose and in cartoons. The inside of Judy's cartoon says, "The hens that produce these eggs are raised free of cages and can “run, scratch and play” in the fresh air of the Sonoma Valley." That must be the fresh air pumped into the long sheds seen above.
Petaluma Poultry also sells eggs under the brands Uncle Eddie's and Gold Circle Farms DHA Omega-3.
Metzer Farms Duck and Goose Eggs
I scoured their web site for any information on Organics or living conditions and came up with a big, fat goose egg!
Metzer Farms is located in the Salinas Valley.
Indian Point Ostrich Ranch Ostrich Eggs
Came up with an even bigger ostrich egg.
Indian Point Ostrich Ranch is located in Tehachapi, California.
Olivera Egg Ranch Quail Eggs
No web site. 14 reviews on Yelp. They’re in San Jose. I will have to investigate. I’ll be back…
TLC Ranch
TLC raises pastured (yay!) certified Organic eggs.
Beaks are tipped (which is less severe than clipping) by the farm that broods the certified organic chicks so they don't peck each other severely while they are in the brooding phase. (Brooding is the raising of chicks to about 18 weeks old where they are provided with warmth until they have fully feathered out.) TLC then puts them out on pasture where they will spend the rest of their lives.
The Culinary Hatchet invites all of the companies mentioned in this post to respond.
EDIT: As of June 29, Whole Foods Market stores are not affected by the JBS Swift Beef Co recall.
DATA SOURCES:
1. Petaluma Poultry web site
2. Oakland Tribune
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