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Just from a brief lookup, Vital Farms seems pretty legit plus they have the Certified Humane label. But I like that their website lets you look at the particular farm on a live video feed! For example, link to where these eggs came from, Farmer Johnson’s farm🐓 I just loved to see the little ladies clucking around😊
fwiw, imo the eggs themselves (for those who partake) are very good. Good color, tasty. I hope that means the birds are happy.
I’ve been buying only Vital Farms eggs for a couple years now. During the most recent fabricated egg shortage, when the price of eggs skyrocketed, Vital Farms price didn’t change. At one point, I was paying less for my eggs than the other companies were charging.
52 million laying hens culled over bird flu
fabricated egg shortage
Yes, but did prices go back down to the same as before? And did prices not change even after enough time had passed (plus some) to rebreed laying hens? It might have started as a true issue, but it isn't now, just an opportunity to raise profit margins.
Prices dropped dramatically around here, but producers anywhere would be fools to drop prices back to where they were, now that they've seen they have to factor in future bird flu disasters.
You sell widgets for $X. Your widget factory, along with about everyone else's got wiped out. You didn't just lose product, you have to basically nuke the place from orbit to get started again. This is going to be a periodical disaster, its the new normal. Are you going to continue selling widgets at $X? Or you you going to charge more to create a cushion against the next disaster?
tl;dr: You want cheap eggs, gotta factory farm. Gonna factory farm? Now you have heightened risk.
Alternately, birds not raised in circle of hell conditions get sick less.
But yes, factory egg farmers "learned" that their vile farming methods have future consequences for them, as well as present day awfulness.
Fair. It might not be fabricated, but it's hardly an unexpected act of God, either.
It was very much a predictable expected disaster that the industry courted intentionally (by treating hens like roaches) while blindly chasing quarterly profit.
Maybe "fabricated" isn't quite the right word, but "intentional", "malicious", "evil" and "bullshit" all fit fine.
I've been buying this brand for years and just hoping that they are as humane as they claim to be. This thread makes me feel better about where I have been choosing to spend more for a more ethical product.
For those who don't know, these are about $8 a dozen by me and have been about the same price for ages. I never saw the egg price increase that other people complained about because my eggs were already so expensive, what's an extra thirty cents or so.
You are a brave being indeed, posting something positive about marketing/packaging of a corporation here, on Lemmy.
I hope you don't get a bunch of hate for it. I do think the packaging of this brand is cute, and they probably do really treat their chickens better than a lot of other ones at least. Yes, I'm sure they're not perfect, but nothing is perfect and we've all got to get along by enjoying what we can.
Separate the art from the artist right?? The packaging is pleasant in itself, no harm in enjoying that independently.
Thanks, and I feel the same! It’s my first time buying from this brand. Seeing the little hens walking around in their pasture put a smile on my face so I wanted to share:)
I'm glad you did, I always wondered when I bought these if I was just getting duped by the packaging, but it seems from the responses here that 'pasture raised' actually has some meaning to it.
You've definitely made me want to find this brand myself!
I've thought on starting a comm where we post companies and products we like. Not really thrilled with the idea of moderating though.
Lemmy's too small to attract shills. Think on it, if you're paying henchmen out of your marketing budget, where are you sending them? Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, FaceBook or little Lemmy?
Yeah, it could be nice to have something like that since Reddit is so astroturfed now that it's basically useless for any sort of product recommendations. Of course, the moment that Lemmy becomes useful for that is the moment that it becomes astroturfed as well.
That community sounds like prime territory for people who let the perfect be the enemy of the good, so I agree, there's a lot of reasons that would be quite miserable to moderate.
Inb4 someone tells me they suck and they’re unethical😭 lol
In my experience they're not as terrible as some of the otheres... definitely not where production farming chickens are concerned.
They require a minimum of 60 acres per operation with the land sectioned off and the flock rotated between parcels. Parcels and production have to meet certain, fairly rigorous, quality control standards or Vital can pull the contract and no longer will purchase eggs. Contracts renew every 5 years, and if it's not to the QC standards and proper maintenance/upgrades aren't maintained, the contract will be pulled.
This is all personal experience from looking into contracting with them and raising eggs. I didn't wind up going through with it due to startup costs and certain logistics... but I did speak with them quite a bit before I waived the whole thing off.
Good to hear! Thank you for providing this very helpful first-hand info:)
This is the company that puts a code on the side where you can see a video of the farm they’re laid on, right? (E: oops, just saw your post mentioned that lol) I haven’t bought eggs in a while, but every time I’ve bought these the farms have looked pretty legit. Like, as close to raising chickens in the back yard as you could reasonably expect a large scale supplier to be. I grew up near factory farms and it’s light years beyond that absolute hellscape.
Yeah it’s the same one! I’ve just never seen that before lol pull up the exact farm your eggs come from via QR code. I know they’re supermarket eggs, but it felt good xD
It's likely. There is no enforced definition of "pasture", "open range" or "cage free".
For example for meat chickens, "open range" just means 12 feet of open space at least once in their life. The rest of their life could be crammed in a building with thousands of others and it's still "open range"
I sure hope that’s not the case! Well the lack of enforcement sucks bc it makes it hard for us consumers to make ethical decisions while out shopping. I was thinking “pasture-raised” “108 sq ft per hen” sounded good xD
You can read my full reply lower...but that isn't the case with the Vital operations.
They require a minimum of 60 acres per operation with the land sectioned off and the flock rotated between parcels. Parcels and production have to meet certain, fairly rigorous, quality control standards or Vital can pull the contract and no longer will purchase eggs. Contracts renew every 5 years, and if it's not to the QC standards and proper maintenance/upgrades aren't maintained, the contract will be pulled.
https://www.foodandwine.com/are-vital-farms-eggs-ethical-8723788 They got sued for false advertisement and a rundown on food and wine tells the details but tldr: they didnt lose the lawsuit and the settlement with PETA was about conduct by the lawyers not the farmers. That said almost all egg farming cannot be particularly humane since it starts with putting all male chicks into a shredder alive.
Edit: they are "certified humane, pasture raised" which enforces minimum outside time and addresses a lot of the concerns that turned me off back when I stopped.
Old text that isn't true for vital farms here:
!This brand is at minimum "certified humane", which carries some actual requirements they must meet, which includes at least X square feet of outdoor space available to each chicken, which is a measurable thing. However, as the article points out, there's no required amount of time the chickens spend there, so that space could be "available" to them in the same way that the grand canyon is "available" to all people in America. It might not be feasible to get there, and there's no required minimum indoor space so it could be 100million chickens in a shed with a single doggy door that connects via tunnel to a cattle ranch next door. Technically available but designed to minimize use.
I used to pay the premium for these and... pete gerties(? I think) but learning how little was enforcably being done for how much extra i was paying made me jaded and i slowly phased eggs out of my home diet. Decide for yourself. Certified humane is better than not Certified humane, and almost all the rest of the labels mean nothing and are not checked or enforced by any third party.!<
Certified Human Pasture-Raised
6hrs min outside a day, weather permitting, with 108 sq ft per hen (2.5ac per 1000).
You are correct. They didn't have "pasture raised" defined back when I looked into all this, (which was quite a long time ago, im realising now since they added it in 2014). Let me add a disclaimer to my comment. Good to hear they are pushing the certification to higher levels.
Yeah, all good. Cage free and free range are shit. Pasture raised is generally legit.
They've got eggs in my local Sprouts, and during the eggdemic, their eggs were practically the same price at the rest. They taste better too, although rule of thumb is orange yolks = high quality of life eating bugs, unless it's a shady dealer who feeds dyes.
I like it, as a vegetarian eggs are the closest thing to meat (they are meat practically so it sucks) that I eat so the more humane the better. Style wise it’s a common graphic design trend but ok cool.
It does indeed seem like a good product, and I buy these when I can. I wonder if they're more ethical than the local eggs I get at the co-op.
Ah yes, such a wholesome profit oriented and animal exploiting company 🤩😍🥰
Man those poor animals being fed and taken care of (assuming the company is legit)
you should read about what "certified humane" actually guarantees, it's very far from wholesome, even if it's an improvement over densely packed cages
The artist did a good job.
Unrelated Image for fun, Blessed Are the Meek
I'm confused.... aren't you still eating them? lol
What does that have to do with the box
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