‘Egg factories’ produce high profits, cheap but dangerous eggs and dangerous places for workers.
The problem, like so many other food safety issues, can be traced back to the industrialization of food production, agribusiness, and lack of government regulation.
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1. One company paid a fine to settle state animal cruelty charges against their egg operations.
2. A huge family agribusiness operation, pleaded guilty to federal immigration charges.
3. At an Iowa egg producer three supervisors attacked employees and threatened to have them fired or killed if they did not submit to rape (charges pending). [Source: New York Times]
Article Written By: Truman Lewis Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend Source: ConsumerAffairs.Com
First it was knocked from its perch by consumers’ rising to cholesterol and now, incredibly, the edible egg is the latest everyday consumable to be scrambled, poached and whipped by Salmonella contamination.
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The recall of hundreds of millions eggs follows a four-fold increase in Salmonella Enteritidis infections since May 2010 and health officials fear the worst may be yet to come.
On August 13, 2010, Wright County Egg, an Iowa egg producer, launched a nationwide egg recall and expanded it on August 19, the recall was expanded. Yesterday, Hillandale Farms of Iowa recalled eggs sold under various brand names including Hillandale Farms, Sunny Farms, and Sunny Meadow.
This is a crisis that’s not likely to be over easily. Salmonella is about as unpleasant an infection as you can think of, even for healthy people, but it can be deadly for infants, the elderly, the chronically ill and anyone with a compromised immune system.
Although it’s hard to think of anything more common in the food supply than the lowly chicken egg, consumption of the shelled ovoids has been declining steadily in recent years.
Americans used to eat one egg per day per person 1960s but the number is now down to about 257 per person per year, according to the Lempert Report, a food industry newsletter. But that figure doesn’t count all the prepared food products that contain eggs and that may or may not have been handled with all due caution.
The problem, like so many other food safety issues, can be traced back to the industrialization of food production. When chickens wandered around barnyards, pecking away at bugs and corn and whatever else they could find, Salmonella was rarely a problem. But now that chickens live their lives in tight quarters, Salmonella has become a frequent intruder in the henhouse.
To be fair, it should be noted that the pesticide-soaked earth is no longer the safest spot to raise barnyard fowl, as a recent study found.
What’s a homemaker to do?
