Business & Tech

Petaluma Egg Farm Criticized For Not Abiding by Organic Standards

Owners say they are doing nothing wrong as National Organic Standards Board debates what constitutes an organic egg

Petaluma Egg Farm, a longtime supplier of organic and conventional eggs, is being criticized for not providing its chickens with access to soil and instead housing them in screened sun porches that prevent the birds from going outside.

The local egg farm, which has some 13,000 hens, describes its organic eggs as “cage-free” and conforming to national organic standards. But the problem is the exact definition of just what makes for an organic egg depends on who you ask, and is, in fact, being debated this week in Seattle by the National Organic Standards Board.

To some, marketing the eggs as organic while not allowing chickens to roam and scratch in the open yard is a misrepresentation.

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"The federal organic standards clearly state that 'year-round access for all animals to the outdoors' is a requirement," said Mark Kastel, senior farm policy analyst with the Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit farm policy research group in Wisconsin, which has filed a complaint about Petaluma Egg Farms with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The tiny porches attached to the henhouses on Petaluma Egg Farm…fail to meet either the intent or the letter of the law governing organic production and food labeling," he said.

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Steve Mahrt, owner of Petaluma Egg Farm, said the USDA only requires USDA requires that birds have access to the outdoors and that his West Petaluma operation goes out of its way to ensure that chicken had soil to scratch, plenty of fresh air and sunlight, even if they were enclosed in sun porches.

"I spend a lot of time thinking about what a chicken needs," said Mahrt, adding that he was the first egg producer in North California to become certified organic in 1995. "Part of our holistic approach is if you make a great environment inside, there is little impetus for them to go outside."

All sun porches have sides that open, although the mesh is in place to make sure chickens don't escape. The birds can also climb up on the rafters, run around and dust themselves.

Mahrt says that critics need to be realistic about the needs of egg farms, since a chicken is needed for every egg produced. "So if there are 8 million people in the Bay Area, that's 8 million chickens that you need to provide eggs for them," he said.

But Kastel disagrees, saying that the problem is what when consumers buy eggs from Organic Valley, the distributor for Petaluma Egg Farms, they think they are buying eggs from hens that roam in the yard all day and feel justified in paying as much as $2 more per carton for it.

And, they say, when producers adopt industrial-scale practices that fail to fully comply with the organic standards for livestock production, it places ethical family farmers at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. 

Marht says the criticism  is not fair and that the farm is committed to organic practices.

"We don’t use any insecticide or pesticides on the ranch, we use a dedicated feed mill and we provide for all their natural behavior inside the sun porches," he said. 

Petaluma Egg Farms sells various products including Judy’s Family Farm Organic Eggs label Rock Island Eggs, Gold Circle Omega and Uncle Eddie’s Cage Free Eggs. Its eggs are all sold under the Organic Valley label, a cooperative that secures most of its eggs from its family-scale farmer members and which made an exception to allow Petaluma Egg Farms to join the cooperative.

The co-op's management says the exception was made because state veterinarians and the California Department of Agriculture strongly advocate that birds do not have free-range outdoor access because of the risk of avian influenza transmission.


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