by: Paul Fassa
(NaturalNews) The Salmonella egg recalls didn`t create favorable media attention to the alternatives available with organic eggs. However, health conscious consumers' organic options are blurred by deceitful large agribusiness firms.
Conditions that Produced Salmonella Contaminated Eggs
The large egg factory farms routinely ignore common sanitation sense as well as treat the egg producing hens inhumanely. They are individually cooped up in cages so small they cannot even turn around. Those small cages are stacked to warehouse ceilings and jammed up against each other horizontally.
The chickens are never let out to graze or be in sunlight. They are force fed commercially produced chicken feed, which originally was thought to be the source of the latest Salmonella outbreak. Injecting hens with antibiotics or vaccines are band-aid solutions that just add toxins to the mix.
But recent FDA inspections of the key factory farms, which caused 2000 known cases of Salmonella to require recalling a half million eggs, exposed "disgusting" unsanitary conditions that created the Salmonella bacteria and infected the crowded chickens.
Organic Versus Bogus Organic Eggs
Organic egg producing guidelines demand constant access to open spaces for chickens to graze and to find grass and insects for food. Organic feed has to be used in the hen houses, which are not allowed to be crowded to the point of immobilizing the hens.
Antibiotics and steroids are not allowed to be injected in organic food producing animals. Instead, they are treated humanely. An overlooked point by the mainstream media is that poorly treated animals are stressed. That stress creates toxins even without adding antibiotics and hormone additives.
But don`t make assumptions on eggs labeled organic. An organic farming watchdog group, the Cornucopia Institute of Madison, Wisconsin, has done their own investigation of egg producers who claim to be organic, and several are really not true to organic guidelines.
Cornucopia wants to protect the honest organic small farmers from unfair competition by the big factory farm posers.
These fraudsters tend to pack their hen houses as badly as the non-organic factory farms, and they then put a small door at the end of the house as access to a small lot that cannot accommodate all the hens inside. This is an example of what they do to falsely comply with free range access guidelines.
Yet the USDA certified organic labels appear on their cartons to unfairly compete with small farmers who seriously concern themselves with producing wholesome high quality organic eggs.