Supermarket organic eggs and the Soil Association

Badgergal

My organic box comes with little newsletter every week, and this week they were talking about organic eggs. I didn't realise this but apparently supermarkets can still legally label their eggs organic despite the fact that their conditions aren't all that great (flocks of 9000, raised non organic to a certain age etc) and there is a huge difference between the conditions of them and the actual Soil Association accredited eggs.

Does anyone know if ANY of the supermarket eggs are SA accredited? As if not I will be changing where I get my eggs from!

jessicamb

No idea I'm afrais on the SA but I've found with supermarket eggs they are never decent quality regardless of the amount I pay/range i choose. I always go for the free range, maybe organic, and the freshness seems to match those that my mother has had lying around from the milkman that are two weeks old.

Sazbo

Badgergal wrote:

Does anyone know if ANY of the supermarket eggs are SA accredited? As if not I will be changing where I get my eggs from!

Hiya Badgergal. Thanks for the interesting post. I'm not a big egg eater, but I had assumed that supermarket organic eggs would be the standard as SA eggs - although knowing what supermarkets are like, I don't know why I would have assumed that!!

Looking on the SA website, it looks like only Waitrose (and ocado) out of the big supermarkets sell SA eggs. See here.

HTH

Badgergal

Ah yes, I forgot to mention that the newsletter did say Waitrose were the only ones who had higher standards.

Of course they are trying to get more people to buy their eggs along with their veg boxes...but I think there is a lot of truth in what they say and I think I will be ordering half a dozen eggs in with my veg box despite the fact that they are more expensive than the supermarket "organic" eggs as what's the point of wasting money if the standards aren't as good as I thought they were?

It's shocking really, that the supermarkets have the cheek to stick a huge markup on their "organic" eggs when they're getting away with doing the bare minimum to satisfy a legal definition rather than the SA's one. I feel I've been duped...makes me wonder if it's the same thing with things like milk, which I also insist upon being organic if only for the sake of the cows...

Quasar

Yes I have to say that I have always been suspicious of supermarket eggs labelled organic. When Omega eggs first appeared, I thought I'd be eating better eggs, but then I read the egg packs carefully and realised I was paying extra for nothing special - I can get all my omega oils by ingesting fresh, coldpressed flax seed oil (expensive, but that's another story).

There are a couple of Waitroses within reasonable distance from where I live, and thanks to Sazbo for passing on info regarding their eggs.

Just out of curiosity - couldn't each egg be marked with the free-range/organic logo? I only ever see them marked with the lion logo, which I believe means British produced, although I'd be happy to stand corrected.

Crystal_

If my memory is correct, the Lion logo on eggs came in after the Edwina Currie fiasco regarding egg safety.
A Lion mark means the eggs meet salmonella criteria.
I would never buy an egg without it!

Farway

Crystal_ wrote: »

If my memory is correct, the Lion logo on eggs came in after the Edwina Currie fiasco regarding egg safety.
A Lion mark means the eggs meet salmonella criteria.
I would never buy an egg without it!

I'm afraid you are not old enough:)
The Lion mark existed way before that, but it quickly became a symbol of disrepute and a guarantee of a stale egg. It was dropped because of that

Post salmonella it was resurrected and used as you describe

Mojisola

Badgergal wrote: »

I didn't realise this but apparently supermarkets can still legally label their eggs organic despite the fact that their conditions aren't all that great (flocks of 9000, raised non organic to a certain age etc)

Who is the box from?

They obviously don't know the European standards for organic laying hens.

Money_maker

Original posts from 12 years ago peeps!

Caterina

In case anyone is interested, there is an organisation, Hen Nation, that sells eggs through a national veg box scheme (Farmaround) and their eggs are from hens allowed to live their natural lifespan in comfort and die of old age. The regular commercial layers are sent to slaughter at a relatively young age because past a certain age they're no longer commercially viable (eg don't produce enough eggs for profit).

Farway

Caterina wrote: »

In case anyone is interested, there is an organisation, Hen Nation, that sells eggs through a national veg box scheme (Farmaround) and their eggs are from hens allowed to live their natural lifespan in comfort and die of old age. The regular commercial layers are sent to slaughter at a relatively young age because past a certain age they're no longer commercially viable (eg don't produce enough eggs for profit).

Just checked, not nationwide delivery, shame