Organic Egg Brand Scorecard
Organic Egg Scorcard Scoring Criteria
Full Report
Executive Summary
Photo Gallery: Industrial-Scale Egg Production—Masquerading As Organic?
The Cornucopia Institute’s report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture, will empower consumers and wholesale buyers who want to invest their food dollars to protect hard-working family farmers that are in danger of being forced off the land by a landslide of eggs from factory farms.
The accompanying organic egg scorecard rates companies that market name-brand and private-label organic “shell” eggs based on 28 criteria that are important to organic consumers. The scorecard showcases ethical family farms, and their brands, and exposes factory farm producers and brands in grocery store coolers that threaten to take over organic livestock agriculture.
The scorecard also profiles some emerging brands that advertise their eggs as “pastured” although their birds are housed in fixed buildings -versus- the true gold standard in organic egg production: generally smaller flocks of poultry in portable henhouses which farmers rotate in fresh pasture, often-times daily.
Some of the factory farm operators literally raise millions of birds (both conventional and organic) with as many as 150,000-200,000 “organic” hens in single buildings.
With this web-based rating tool, you can see which brands of eggs found in your region are produced using the best organic farming practices and ethics. Based on more than a year’s research into the organic egg business, the scorecard rates almost 136 different name-brand eggs and additional private-label products.
Both the report and scorecard highlight the good news in the organic egg industry by showcasing the true heroes, including national and local producers that are supplying ethically-produced organic eggs and are worthy of consumer support — and those who are going “beyond organic” with intensively pastured birds in mobile housing.
