Iowa legislators are using their time to work on a bill that would require grocery stores to “sell conventional eggs” versus only those that come from chickens that are cage free, free range or raised using organic methods. This is embarrassing and problematic for a few reasons:
1. Currently, the majority of the eggs being sold in Iowa are already conventional eggs; from chickens raised in cages or confinements.
2. Chickens raised in confinements or cages are given lots of antibiotics to stay healthy and this can result in hens that lay contaminated eggs. In 2010, there was a huge recall of eggs that sickened those who ate them because they were diseased with a bacteria; these eggs came from suppliers here in Iowa – not the little farmer but industrial agriculture.
3. Legislators were elected to serve us – not industrial agriculture. The rationale that is being pushed “to ensure consumer choice” is ridiculous because stores will always carry whatever products their customers want. No one has to legislate stores to sell milk or cheese.
Here is a simple solution. Legislators, get out of the egg selling business, do your job and represent the interests of the people you serve.
Carol Patnode
Mason City
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Don’t fix what don’t need fixing.
Read the bill people, it only requires stores to carry conventional eggs if they participate in federal food programs ie WIC, SNAP. The same stores can still offer the cage free eggs also, so they are not dictating what you can buy. They just don’t want to hear you complain about someone buying $4.00 a dozen eggs and pulling out the food stamps to pay for it!
Legislators are you listening? Let the consumer decide with their demand for the products they want.
Hmm…
Eggs laid in confinement houses roll down on to a conveyor and out the building and washed, graded, and packaged probably with in an hour or 2 of being laid. The chicken poop falls though the cages and very little, if any touches the eggs.
Cage free range eggs are laid in an open building/field anywhere the chicken decides to lay it among thousands of chickens doing the same thing. At the same time another thousand chickens are pooping right were the eggs are being laid. Then the eggs need to be gathered somehow and who knows how long after it was laid (and sitting in chicken poop) before they are washed ( I am sure the are scrubbed well, NOT), graded and packaged.
Sorry I would rather eat a safe, CLEAN egg than some salmonella bomb waiting to make me sick.
Real answer is to offer any choice you want to buy and leave the government out of it as long as it is properly labeled.
Whats embarrassing is our elected officials.
Thank you for opinion Carol. Im glad thart Matt labeled this piece as “Opinion”. He should have afforded the same courtest to Ms. Hovlands recent submission.
Iowa legislators are just trying to make us think that they are doing something important.
Or doing anything at all!
Sounds like common sense here,
Gotta agree with Ms. Patnode on this.