We’re members of the American Pastured Poultry Producer’s Association, and part of the membership is being able to participate in an online discussion forum. A few days ago the question arose, “Where could a person find eggs that had been candled to ensure no blood spots, for a customer who was a strict vegetarian and couldn’t eat them?”

As it turns out, blood spots have no correlation with fertile or unfertile eggs, meaning that this customer’s concerns about eating an undeveloped embryo were rather unfounded, so I suggested the farmer talk with the consumer to gently educate them about what blood spots in eggs really are. Here was my comment: “I would say, that unless a producer is willing to go to the extra expense of candling all the eggs (and culling all the blood-spot-containing ones!), this would be a great opportunity for customer education. Certainly one of our biggest hurdles as pastured producers is being able to educate our customers so that they can eat “nose to tail,” since we don’t have luxury of high-volume waste commodity sales…. It’s work, but it produces the loyal, high-quality customers we need to thrive.”

You see, when folks spend their lives buying cookie-cutter meat (and yes, even egg!) products from the store, they grow accustomed to every single product looking, tasting, and smelling the same every time. But I’ll let you in on a farm secret… Real food does not come from a cookie-cutter and varies from animal to animal and year to year. Eggs, even from a single chicken, vary in size, shape, color, and texture. But think of how much work and waste goes into selling only “Extra Large Brown Eggs.” USDA grading standards even include a silhouette of the “perfect” egg shape, since some eggs are more round, some are more missile-shaped, and some are lop-sided, and must be culled because they don’t fit the criteria.

Large-scale animal production factories (“CAFOs”) can perfect their products to this minute degree because they have access to a commodity market that most consumers aren’t aware of. The eggs that don’t make the “grade A” cut, like the “peewee” eggs from young hens or the eggs with weird shells or double yolks or other harmless anomalies like blood spots, end up as liquid or powdered egg product. Nothing wrong with that. I suppose it’s good that even commercially-produced foods aren’t wasted… But the point is that this side of real production is hidden from the consumer purely for the sake of visual uniformity. So when you start buying from a real, small-scale farm, you might be a little shocked with you crack open your first double-yolked egg!

So tell me, does it give you the heebie jeebies to discover what real food is like, or do you see it as an adventure?