industrial organics and/or not open enough to participate

Eggland’s Best is engaged mainly in conventional egg distribution and marketing, but has a considerable share of the nationwide market for organic eggs. Twelve different independent industrial‐scale egg production companies supply organic eggs for the Eggland’s Best brand.

On their website, Eggland’s Best misleadingly tells its customers that the company “adopted very stringent welfare regulations.” However, the only third party certification they adhere to for their caged hens is the United Egg Producers Animal Welfare program (the industry trade/lobby group), which only guarantees that hens have access to feed and water—the standards do not even require that hens have enough space to stretch their wings. In fact, the standards are so lax and industry‐ friendly that they even allow cages—which are of course prohibited in organic production.

The website also claims that “Eggland’s Best Organic eggs exceed USDA organic standards of production,” but no mention is made of outdoor access or how in fact they are exceeding the standards. In fact, Eggland’s Best’s Director of Quality Assurance lobbied the USDA testifying that proposed standards to enforce outdoor access for organic laying hens “have gone too far.”

One of the twelve suppliers for Egg‐Land’s Best Organic eggs is Cal‐Maine, the largest egg agribusiness in the United States. Cal‐Maine is a publicly traded corporation that is mainly involved in conventional, caged egg production, but has in recent years grown its presence in organics. The company recently financed the construction of an organic egg laying facility in Kansas, with hundreds of thousands of birds. Another supplier for Eggland’s Best is Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch, which houses 340,000 organic laying hens at its Green Meadow Organics facility in Michigan. Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch has also been active in opposing stronger animal welfare standards that would require outdoor access for organic hens.