Best Eggs Organic Free Range Or Conventional

If you chose the latter, it’s probably because you remember the August 2010 Salmonella Enteritidis outbreak, which prompted the recall of more than 500 million eggs after nearly 2,000 people became sick with fever, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. In the aftermath of the outbreak, disturbing reports emerged about the two Iowa companies that produced the tainted eggs—Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, both of which were shut down by the FDA until they could remedy the problems. The government pinned the blame on Salmonella contamination throughout the henhouses, in both the chicken feed and droppings. But FDA inspectors also found mice, flies, and wild birds indoors, and hens that had escaped from their cages and were wandering through immense piles of manure. None of this did anything to improve the image of big commercial egg farms, which had already been criticized for squeezing hens into tiny, restrictive cages. In the months after the Great Egg Scare, producers of organic, cage-free, and free-range eggs struggled to keep up with a sudden surge in consumer demand. But while there is much to recommend those eggs—including a ban on toxic pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the hens’ feed—an ironclad guarantee that they are Salmonella free is not one of the advantages. According to public health officials, the main thing that keeps eggs germ free is how an individual farmer—whether conventional or organic—manages a hen’s eggs at every stage of the process from laying to washing, packing, and transport. Prevention visited three farms—one conventional, one large-scale organic, and one small, local organic—for a firsthand glimpse of the journey of an egg from the hen to your plate. Prepare to be surprised. Eggs and Salmonella: New Food Safety Research What does an organic chicken farm look like? Conventional EggsThe 100-acre conventional farm owned by Elmer Martin lies in the lush, rolling Pennsylvania Dutch countryside of Lancaster County. Before mounting the stairs to the henhouse door, visitors must don disposable coveralls—zipped up, full-body protective suits of a thin polyester, finished with plastic booties—which makes this tour feel a little like an adventure into a Hot Zone virus lab. The protection is not for the visitors, though; it’s for the birds. Outsiders could easily introduce dangerous foreign bacteria and contaminants on their clothes and shoes. Martin’s henhouse is a long, narrow, windowless, industrial-looking building set off on a patch of bright green grass. We walk through the door and into a large, open, dim space that stretches 450 feet (the length of 1 1/2 football fields) and houses 87,000 birds—a little less than a typical henhouse on a factory farm. Wooden walkways stretch into the dusty distance between rows of cages, which are stacked four high. Hens are housed, in groups of seven, in cages that measure 20 by 24 inches—yielding each bird a space smaller than the size of an 8 1/2-by-11-inch piece of paper. The air is acrid and filled with the cluckings and shufflings of thousands of birds. They screech when we approach, but there’s not enough room for them even to flap their wings. The hens spend their productive years in these cages, pecking at the feed that shuttles past in an automatic trough and laying their eggs—about five per week—which roll down the sloped floor of the cage to another trough that carries them into the next room for cooling and storing. Most of the hens never even get to ogle a rooster, because they lay eggs whether or not a male is in the vicinity. When they are too old to produce “good” eggs, at around 24 months of age, they are shipped out to be slaughtered for various cooked-chicken products such as canned chicken meat. As unsettling as the scene may be to a newcomer, Martin’s farm is at the forefront of egg safety because it participates in the Pennsylvania Egg Quality Assurance Program (PEQAP), which has made strides against Salmonella by controlling risk factors, according to Paul H. Patterson, PhD, professor of poultry science at Pennsylvania State University, one of PEQAP’s founders. The Pennsylvania program has been so effective that its methods served as the basis of a mandatory new set of FDA guidelines, called the Egg Safety Rule, which began being phased in across the country last summer—though not in time to prevent the Iowa outbreaks. As part of PEQAP, Martin buys only chicks that have been certified Salmonella free, and he tests them again before bringing them into the henhouse. For added assurance, he regularly monitors the barn for any trace of the bacteria by dragging swabs through manure pits under the cages and then sending samples to state labs to test for any trace of the germs. And he cleans out the manure at least once a month—versus as seldom as once every 2 years at some conventional facilities. Equally important, Martin takes multiple measures to keep out rats, mice, flies, and wild birds, which can spread Salmonella bacteria around the henhouse. The Pennsylvania system has proven that eggs from conventional caged hens can be made very low risk. In 1992, when the program began, 26% of the manure samples that inspectors took from participating Pennsylvania henhouses tested positive for Salmonella. Now it’s down to 1%. “We believe the Egg Safety Rule, once fully implemented nationally in 5 to 10 years, can help prevent roughly 79,000 illnesses annually,” says Don Kraemer, acting deputy director for operations at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. That would represent a reduction of more than 50% from the current FDA estimate of 142,000 egg-borne Salmonella cases a year. Organic EggsJust down the road from Elmer Martin is Robert Keller’s farm. It has all the advantages of a PEQAP farm but, in addition, it’s organic. Organic operations have a much higher level of oversight than conventional farms do. To maintain their certification and use the organic seal on their product, farms have to be inspected annually, at a minimum, by a third-party certifier with USDA accreditation. Compare that with the sporadic oversight of conventional facilities by the FDA, which has been chronically strapped for resources. “The FDA had never conducted a routine inspection of one of the farms involved in last year’s big recall,” says Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, dedicated to safe and sustainable food practices. That doesn’t mean that organic operations necessarily conform to the bucolic images that most people have in mind. In fact, most supermarket “organic” eggs are produced in factory-size facilities. The producers follow the letter of the National Organic Program, which requires that the poultry receive organic feed, are cage-free, and have “outdoor access.” There isn’t, however, any mandate about how much time the chickens need to spend in the great outdoors. Keller’s 23,800 birds live in a 450-foot-long henhouse with three tiers of perches; they’re indoors in inclement weather but otherwise often outdoors by day, exiting by portals. They have more than 3 times more space per bird than Martin’s hens, but the barn is still crowded. Most of the birds mill about on the floor, with some of them—those higher up in the pecking order—perching on the less-crowded upper levels. Most of the hens lay their eggs in the darkened nesting boxes. Over the past 5 years, multiple studies, including one massive survey of 23 European countries, have shown lower rates of Salmonella in cage-free hens (both organic and conventional). Experts believe that’s largely a function of smaller flocks, making sanitary conditions easier to maintain. “Organic farmers aren’t allowed to use antibiotics or most other drugs to treat their flocks,” says Mark Kastel, cofounder of the Cornucopia Institute, a pro-organic group. “It’s incumbent on them to create a healthier environment.” Organic feed is also less vulnerable to contamination. Conventional “chicken mash” is based on corn and soy, but it can also include slaughterhouse waste—which may be tainted with any of the germs that infected the animals themselves, says Michael Greger, MD, director of public health and animal agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States. By contrast, organic feed cannot contain by-products from mammals or poultry. “And safety isn’t only about pathogens that can land you in the hospital,” says Kastel. “Organic feed is also free of toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides and contains no genetically modified organisms.” Pasture-Raised EggsTo many proponents of sustainable food, however, the most desirable eggs come from smaller, local organic farms. These are much closer to what a conscientious shopper probably envisions when she picks up a dozen “cage-free” eggs at the market. And it’s the life that the 150 chickens at the 20-acre Neversink Farm in the foothills of New York’s Catskill Mountains enjoy, nestled amid wooded hills, fields of flowers, and a pond full of trout. At this small organic farm—established by Conor and Katie Crickmore 1 1/2 years ago—the birds have a small, rounded coop that they can leave and return to at will, restrained only by a movable electric fence that keeps them in—and predators out. The birds at Neversink Farm are “pasture-raised”—meaning the hens are moved to a different patch of land everyday when the fence posts are shifted, allowing the chickens to hunt and peck for a new crop of grass and insects in addition to their certified organic feed, which the Crickmores grind themselves, so it is always fresh. On our arrival, instead of screeching and cowering like caged birds, the hens cluck and circle our feet in curiosity. When one strays too far, Conor picks it up and cradles it. He describes the different chicken sounds a farmer learns to recognize. There’s a squawking “complaining sound” that often means “I want corn,” as opposed to the singsong sound the hens make when they’re foraging. Both are different from the “egg-laying” sound, which is a loud caw. And the birds coo themselves to sleep. Because the flock is so small, Neversink Farm is not required to follow the FDA’s Egg Safety Rule, which exempts producers with fewer than 3,000 birds. (As a certified organic farm, it is bound by the National Organic Program.) But the Crickmores are so confident of the safety of their product that they consume their own eggs raw in homemade mayonnaise. With a small flock and ample space, manure management is not a major problem. Conor and Katie scatter a new layer of straw on the floor of the coop every day, protecting the birds from their excrement and allowing the manure to dry for composting later. In spring and summer, it will be used to fertilize their vegetable fields. Being out in the fields and not crowded into tight quarters, the hens don’t spread infections as quickly as caged hens do, and farmers say they develop healthier immune systems this way. The birds can also engage in their natural behaviors, including “dust bathing,” which cleans their feathers, says Honor Schauland, campaign assistant for the Organic Consumers Association, who raises chickens for eggs on her farm in northeastern Minnesota. Research suggests that pasture-raised eggs may even have superior nutritional content. Scientists at Pennsylvania State University found 2 1/2 times more omega-3s and twice the vitamin E in the eggs of pasture-raised hens (which were given feed as a supplement to their forage) than those of caged hens that were fed only standard commercial mash. “Leafy plants like grasses, white clover, red clover, alfalfa, and legumes contain more vitamins and unsaturated fatty acids than standard mash does,” says Heather Karsten, PhD, associate professor of crop and soil sciences at Penn State, who conducted the study. (Some producers of both organic and conventional eggs enrich their hens’ feed to boost omega-3s or other nutrients.) So, Which Eggs Are Safest?The issue is highly contentious among poultry experts. Claims and counterclaims ping-pong back and forth between the opposing camps. Some commercial producers contend that cleanliness can be a greater challenge in cage-free facilities, because the birds mill around at the bottom of the henhouse, stepping in each other’s excrement. And birds that range outside, they say, can pick up PCBs or other contaminants from the soil. Organic producers counter with research showing that the fewer birds per henhouse, the lower the risks. “Cage-free and organic flocks are, by definition, smaller because you can’t fit as many into the henhouse,” says Dr. Greger at the Humane Society. Does this mean that organic eggs are 100% safe? No. Vigilance and enforcement are still farm-by-farm initiatives. If any egg producers fail to keep rats and mice out of their farms—or if they buy infected flocks to begin with—those eggs may be tainted. In general, though, the risks of infection in both organic and conventional eggs remain low. The CDC and food scientists estimate that, nationally, only 1 in 20,000 eggs is contaminated. “You could literally eat raw eggs for sixty years and never encounter one that is positive for Salmonella,” says Kevin M. Keener, PhD, associate professor of food science and food process engineer at Purdue University. But if you should be one of the unlucky ones to ingest a Salmonella-tainted egg, the consequences could be fever and upset stomach—or hospitalization and even death, particularly among the very young or very old. That’s why we all have a stake in industry practices that will give us…a good egg. —Additional reporting by Anne Underwood What’s in a Claim?Any carton of eggs you buy is likely to be plastered with descriptive terms. Some are meaningful, but some are misleading. Read what these labels really mean: Certified Humane Raised and HandledMeets the standards of the Humane Farm Animal Care program—an independent nonprofit. The standards include being cage-free and having sufficient space to engage in natural behaviors such as dust bathing and perching. United Egg Producers CertifiedThe eggs were produced in compliance with industry-codified standard practices. (More than 80% of commercial eggs carry this seal.) All NaturalThe hens eat vegetarian feed, with no animal slaughterhouse products. Cage-FreeHens must live in an open space, not a cage or a coop, but the “open space” can be inside a crowded henhouse. Both organic and conventional hens can be cage-free. Free-RangeSimilar to cage-free, except that birds have some degree of outdoor access—though the amount, duration, or quality of that outdoor time is not specified. Pasture-RaisedHens are allowed to range on fresh pasture. Often they are housed in trailers that can be towed to different fields. OrganicHens must be given organic feed, which contains no toxic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides and no GMOs or slaughterhouse by-products. They must never be caged, and they must have outdoor access. The USDA certifies this designation. Why Prevention Cares About EggsPrevention has a 60-year interest in healthy and safe farming techniques. The magazine’s owners and founders, the Rodale family, have been committed to studying and promoting the links between organic farming and healthy soil, healthy food, and healthy people since the 1940s through the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA. In addition, the family’s own farm in Allentown, PA, includes 90-some laying chickens, which are “allowed to be chickens,” says Maya Rodale, great-granddaughter of company founder J.I. Rodale. The Rodale hens have daily access to fresh pasture outside the stone building that houses them, eat organic feed, and wander back to the laying boxes when they’re ready to produce an egg. At night, they roost on 2-foot-tall perches in the middle of the house, where they naturally flock for safety. The eggs they produce feed the Rodale family and are also used at the Rodale cafeterias. Any surplus is given to Second Harvest, a local food pantry. How to Choose the Right Egg for Your Health Needs Egg Myths and Facts