Your Guide to Grocery-Store Egg-Labels: Pastured Eggs: Part 4

When you hear "Pasture-Raised," you might think of the (very) expensive, but good looking carton of eggs at the store. At least that is what I think of when I hear "Pasture-Raised." 

In most cases, the pastured eggs you would find at the store (most often places like the Boise Co-op, ect...) are indeed from local farms. There are a few exceptions though, since some pasture-raised egg farms are quite large, with eggs in major grocery chains (ex: Happy Egg Co., Vital Farms). Pastured eggs don't have to be from a local farm in order to be good, but still, the closer the farm is to you, the fresher everything is going to be! 

 

There is a myriad of different rearing and raising styles for pastured eggs. Some farms stick with the large barn that is connected to paddocks of pasture so the birds can be rotated, and others use portable pens to move their chickens. A portable pen basically can mean any structure that can be moved by hand or machine across the pasture to give the chickens, ducks, turkeys, ect.... fresh grass several times a week. The style of "pasturing" depends on the scale, finances, and geographic location of the farm. 

Portable animal pens aren't exactly a new invention. However, they have grown in popularity over the past 20-30 years since people have started to recognize the benefits of allowing their animals to eat grass, such as decreased cholesterol, less fat (of the bad kinds), higher vitamin and mineral concentration, and of course, taste. 

Compared to the other types of eggs, pastured eggs are the least regulated out of conventional, cage-free, and free-range eggs. Some pastured eggs can have more regulations tied them depending on their label; for example, a "Certified Organic Pasture-Raised Egg" is not only a mouthful of words, but the extra fees, record keeping, and Organic certification tie more USDA regulations onto that carton of eggs, and it doesn't necessarily make the egg taste any better than the eggs that just says "pastured eggs." Essentially, the name of the game is that the more labels there are on a carton, the more money can (or has to) be charged per dozen. Pastured eggs kind of let the farmer "pick their poison," if you will. They can decide whether to go through tons of hoops to get a slightly higher profit through organic certification, or produce the same quality of egg for a price that still satisfies both the customer and the producer, with little to no hoops or fees that goes along with (what I call) excess labeling. 

It's for that reason why the only labels you see on the eggs from Happy Hen Farms are free-range and non-GMO. That's what those eggs are made from, and it's easy to remember what they are!