Off The Shellf #26: Being a Good Egg

Warning: if you don't like egg puns, stop reading now.

Oct 30, 2022

26 weeks - half a year I’ve managed to keep this up, and I’ve learned so much already. I hope you have too. Thanks for joining me on the journey. If you like this project and think a friend would like it too, please share it. And if you haven’t yet subscribed, hit the button below.

Half a year done - now let’s double the readership!

What first comes to mind when you think about the sustainability of eggs?

If you answered welfare, you’re like me. And because it’s me writing this newsletter, that’s what we’re going to look at this week. Actually, there’s a lot more to chickens and eggs than welfare, but we’ll cover that another time.

Here are some facts to get us started:

The UK ate 13.5 billion eggs in 2021. That’s as if every single person in the country (babies included) ate one egg every 43 hours.
Most of those eggs came from about 40 million hens. That’s 3 hens serving every 5 people in the country.
In 2020, 42% of our eggs came from caged hens. That’s come down from 90% in 1996.

Deduction: we eat loads of eggs, using millions of caged birds to do it.

I’m guessing most of us would agree that cages aren’t the ideal environment for any animal. If you need convincing, this article by the RSPCA lays out the problems for hens in cages. If you can’t be bothered to read it, the gist is:

Hens can’t behave naturally in cages, and they’re at risk of being injured by other birds.

42% sounds exceptionally high to me for a civilised society. I would have thought that consumer demand for free-range eggs would have led to a much more rapid phase-out of cage-produced eggs. So I took a (virtual) trip to the supermarket to eggsplore why people might not be opting for free-range.

Unsurprisingly, price comes into it. Tesco sells 15 own-brand caged eggs for £1.49 (10p per egg). It sells 12 free-range eggs for £2.05 (17p per egg).

At our biggest supermarket, therefore, free range eggs are 70% more expensive. What about organic? Forget about it - those are 220% more expensive, or 3 times the price of caged eggs.

What does this mean for your shopping bill? Let’s stay with the average person, eating that one egg every 43 hours. By the way, I recommend you don’t do that. It can’t be good for your circadian rhythm. Because I’m a bore, I worked out the incremental cost of going free-range by building a rudimentary excel model. For an average household, the difference between buying caged and free-range eggs is £34.38 per year, or 66 pence per week. I’m happy to share my proprietary egg budgeting model with you: just subscribe to this newsletter and I’ll send it over.

So, for many people, the choice to go with cage-produced eggs may come down to cost - particularly now, considering the squeeze on many households’ budgets.

But if the extra cost isn’t an issue, then maybe it’s a general lack of awareness about the provenance of eggs. I noticed that, while the caged eggs were indeed labelled as caged, they still bore a prominent, authoritative-looking stamp: the British Lion ‘quality’ label. To some, this might give the impression that these eggs are high-quality, from a sustainable source. That would be incorrect. All that the British Lion label does is guarantee adherence to food safety standards. As an aside, the guide below is something that will impress your friends. Ever wondered what that code on your eggs is all about? Neither have I. But here it is. Most interestingly, the first digit tells you how the chicken was kept.

So the Red Lion can help you identify how the eggs made it onto the shelf, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee high standards of animal welfare. For that, it’s better to look for the ‘RSPCA Assured’ logo. This is the clearest indicator that what you’re buying is free range, and it should be easy to find on any free range box.

Labels aren’t the answer to everything: enforcement is difficult, the standards might not be perfect, and fraud is always a risk. But they’re a start, and I think the more conscious we are of these initiatives, the better we will get as a society at holding producers and retailers to account. If you can afford it, look for the label and buy free-range.

And instead of holding yourself to one egg every 43 hours, try putting your 4 weekly eggs together, whisking them up with some salt and melted butter on a Sunday morning, and having them scrambled with some sourdough and a drizzle of chilli oil.

What do you look for in an egg? Do you favour provenance over price? Colour over size? Duck, chicken, quail? What’s your favourite brand? Let me know in the comments.

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