The hens—organic and non—that produce Paul’s “Natural Eggs from Free-Roaming Hens” and my “Organic Eggs from Cage Free Hens” are all “gently” debeaked.  None of them live in cages, and both organic and non-organic hens are given the same amount of space.  In fact, the only thing that really differentiates my eggs from Paul’s is what they eat.  All the hens on the farm are vegetarian, a fact the farm splashes headily across every carton, but the organic hens eat feed that was grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides and artificial chemicals. 

That’s it, really.  Otherwise they’re much the same.  This privilege costs me an extra $1.60 per dozen.  Is it worth it?

Contrary to the USDA regulations I’ve been looking up online, which treat free-range and free-roaming as synonyms that both imply access to the outside, my farmer maintained that a difference exists between the two: my free-range hens necessitate an exit door, whereas Paul’s free-roaming hens are cage-free, but kept inside.  He admitted somewhat ruefully, however, that even the free roamers spend very little time outside, especially given the current Asian-flu-fearful cultural atmosphere.  Little wonder farmers are leery of exposing hens to a world of chicken manure, given what might lay in wait.  Those who dream of pasture-pecking, grub-crunching, wildflower-nuzzling chickens laying eggs for supermarket consumption should rub their eyes and smell the brewing coffee—feeding these chickens grass would take an entire savanna.  (Recall that an acre of grass can handle the output of about forty chickens, a fact that incongruous clashes with talk of henhouses filled with thousands of birds).

The moral of this story?  USDA rules for organic egg production are so lax that both conscientious farmers who try to provide their chickens with a good life AND corner-cutting profit seekers with an ear for spin can apply many of the same labels to their eggs.  In other words, the only way to know how happy your hens are is to get to know the farmer collecting the eggs.  Mine is a good guy who doesn’t feed his chickens fishmeal or stuff them into cages, and calls his customers back.  But he’s selling $5.49 dozens laid by debeaked hens that never saw a blade of grass in their crowded, sheltered lives. 

My local farmer’s market sells pastured eggs for $3.50 a dozen, but it wasn’t until this little experiment that I realized I could get better eggs there for cheaper.  I won’t be making that mistake again.

Nathalie Jordi's appetites keep her bouncing between between County Cork, New York, London and the French Alps.  When not slinging curd or interviewing farmers, she writes for Travel&Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Gastronomica, and her blog at www.autobiogeography.com.  Her dreams of a life spent baking, drinking margaritas, and sitting in the sun are gathering steam during her current stint as a waitress in New York City.