Country Chatter

Sometimes there are things that get under your skin and pet peeve #1 is one of them.  Take a good look at this egg carton and see if you can tell me what is wrong with it.

Let’s zoom in for a closer look.

Anyone selling eggs should know better but it boils down to being ALL about advertizing and appealing to the consumer’s misguided perceptions.

First of all it is illegal to sell feed with meat, meat by-products  or bone meal in any form to chickens. So by saying it is “vegetarian fed”  implies that some chickens are fed meat.  This is not true. Period.

Secondly,  it shows the stupidity of our world.  Chickens love bugs, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, worms and will even eat a mouse or small snake if one happens to across their path.  There is no way you can  keep a chicken from eating any of the above “meats” unless they are kept in cages with very sterile conditions and use  lots of pesticides.  The customer then cries “foul” (excuse the pun!).  They want cage-free, free-range hens  that are running around outdoors laying their eggs.  Ironically these same customers will  buy meal-worms treats to hand feed their “vegetarian-fed” hens!  The only part of the formula for free-range chickens being  “vegetarian-fed” is what the human puts in their feed trough.  Of course free-range is the most natural and healthiest way to raise chickens but just remember, free-range are technically not just ‘vegetarian-fed”!

It is also amazing to me the use of the word “fresh”.  Webster says “fresh” means “just recently as in recently laid egg”.   Now, really, who wants to eat something old?  But have you noticed you can hard-boil eggs you buy in the store but not freshly laid eggs?  That means means they are at least a week or more old by the time you buy them.   So if “fresh” (farm fresh, country fresh) applies to eggs purchased in a grocery store, what word applies to true “fresh” eggs?  There is nothing wrong with store-purchased eggs but they aren’t really “fresh”.  The eggs in a store come from a poultry farm producing high quality eggs meeting the highest of USDA standards but it takes time to get the eggs from the farm to the consumer. It is amazing it happens as quickly as it does.

Just for the record, I am in no way questioning the quality of store-purchased eggs.  After all, they originate from a hard-working farmer striving to provide a quality product for the consumer to eat. The grocery store is one avenue to get the product to the consumer.  I am “pet-peeved” about the advertizing!

Sometimes I see ads for “vegetarian-fed” beef.  Just for the record;  NO COW EATS MEAT!  Cows only eat grains and legumes or grasses.  Again, it is illegal to put any meat, meat by-products or bone meal in any form in cattle feed.  But the consumer sees the ad blip and translates it into a fact; “this beef is healthier and better for you because it was not fed meat”.

As a beef and egg producer it irritates me how the media is so subtle in how it misguides the consumer. I understand that most consumers are too far removed from the farm to know the “truth” but the same consumers are often a vocal voice and “experts” in their misguided information.