No More Organic Eggs?
Act Today to Protect Organic Egg Producers
The FDA is zeroing in on egg farmers who provide outdoor access (required in certified organic production) for their flocks. The agency has issued a Draft Guidance that will make it difficult, expensive and perhaps even impossible to maintain medium-sized poultry flocks outdoors.
This could spell the end for commercial-scale, truly organic eggs where hens live outdoors, free to exhibit their native behaviors, as required by the USDA’s organic regulations. The FDA’s guidance seeks to prevent outbreaks of Salmonella Enteritidis in shell eggs, and was sparked by a major 2010 salmonella outbreak in eggs, centered on “factory farms” in Iowa, confining tens of thousands of hens indoors in filthy and dangerous conditions.
The fact is, based on published-reviewed research, that the biggest risk to human health comes from caged hens in giant factory farms—not organic birds enjoying a good life outdoors!
The comment period on this guidance ends
on Monday, September 23.
Click here to voice your concerns to the FDA.
In this guidance, the FDA appears to have colluded with a willing USDA to determine that a tiny enclosed porch, attached to a giant poultry house, constitutes acceptable outdoor access. To comply with federal organic law, the FDA must delete the “Indoor Area with Porch” as one of the four housing styles acceptable for organic production.
Many of the FDA’s recommendations for avoiding contact with wild birds and other wildlife — as salmonella prevention measures — are logistically and economically impractical, and risk putting undue burdens on organic producers who follow the spirit and the letter of the organic law and regulations.
For example, netting entire outdoor runs/pasture and putting up expensive new fencing, would be cost-prohibitive and impractical. Use of noise cannons would presumably scare the hens as well as wild birds, and hens would be discouraged from going outdoors (there is no research presented to suggest otherwise).
The FDA was highly selective in citing scientific studies supporting its conclusion that contact with wild birds should be minimized. For further in-depth analysis of the relative risks associated with conventional, confinement egg production, and eggs from certified organic farms with access to the outdoors, see Cornucopia’s 2011 scientific literature review.
Please act today to protect access to authentic organic eggs!
Please submit your comments directly to the FDA, via their website,
by the end of the day MONDAY!
(Even if you’ve executed and mailed one of the proxy letters, you can still amplify your voice by making an additional electronic comment now.)
