Next time you're looking for eggs, you might want to skip sourcing them from everyone's
favorite standby bargain grocer Aldi. Now, keep in mind that we're not talking about
Aldi's prosecco-infused chocolate eggs that came out around Easter 2020. Those are heavenly,
and you should definitely get those. Seriously you'll feel they make your life a little more complete.
We're talking about the hen-laid carton eggs that you buy on a weekly basis for your Sunday
morning breakfast. Basically, even though Aldi is great for almost everything else,
it's not a great idea to buy your eggs from Aldi these days at least until 2025. Why?
By then, Aldi has committed to only selling eggs laid by hens in cage-free facilities.
Good on them. That's no small thing, especially considering that, as of 2015, around 97 percent
of all egg-laying hens in the U.S. are raised in battery cages, with less space to move
than a piece of standard notebook paper. By 2025, Aldi will be leading the way in the
United States towards more humane food-sourcing policies.
But until 2025? If you're going to buy Aldi, buy organic. Aldi's cheaper eggs are branded
Goldhen, which are sourced from Rose Acre Farms, one of the country's largest egg suppliers.
But unfortunately, Rose Acre Farms does not have the best rap sheet.
As Aldi Reviewer will tell you, even the cheaper eggs you'll find at Aldi are certified as,
quote, "raised humanely." But what does that label really mean when it comes to the lives
of the hens who lay them?
In 2019, the company went on public record trying to push back on California state regulations
safeguarding animal rights. Among other things, they lobbied to include ramps in the calculation
of the amount of floor space necessary to ensure that hens are not cruelly confined,
and to limit the definition of an egg-laying hen to mature chickens, and not just any female
domesticated chicken. That's… odd.
"Well, it wasn't in a tree, it was in a hole. I mean, it's a rat's egg, or something…”
In 2018, the FDA investigated Rose Acre Farms and found dirty chicken houses, rodent infestations,
and their investigation uncovered hauntingly similar conditions to what undercover investigators
from the Humane Society found eight years prior: hens in filthy conditions unable to
reach food, suffering from broken bones, prolapsed uteruses, and nestled in among rotting corpses…
which we're not going to show you, for obvious reasons. That particular undercover investigation
led to a lawsuit, in which plaintiffs also called the company out for misleading imagery
on its packaging and marketing "free-roaming" eggs, a label that doesn't even really apply
to eggs.
More troubling still is that the unsanitary conditions that Rose Acre Farms has come under
constant scrutiny for in the last decade are not solely an animal rights issue. They could
also directly affect your health, because that 2018 FDA investigation? It wasn't random.
The FDA inspected Rose Acre Farms due to a salmonella outbreak linked to the company's
shell eggs. Before we go any further, if you bought Aldi eggs in 2018, you can breathe.
The salmonella outbreak did not, apparently, infect eggs distributed to Aldi, which has
probably as much to do with luck as anything else.
Briefly, the 2018 outbreak infected 45 people who experienced diarrhea, fever, and abdominal
cramps and led to 11 hospitalizations in 10 states.
In hindsight, the outbreak is hardly surprising. In 2012, ABC News reported that eggs from
cage-confined hens were almost 8 times more likely to harbor salmonella bacteria than
non-caged hens. While the FDA investigation into Rose Acre Farms led the company to voluntarily
recall over 206 million eggs it had distributed domestically, the same salmonella-infected
eggs were shipped to the Bahamas, Haiti, Aruba, the Cayman Islands, St. Martin, and St. Barts,
where the FDA has no authority to intervene.
What's the moral of the story? Stay away from Aldi's Goldhen eggs just to be on the safe
side, and until 2025, maybe opt for their Simply Nature, Cage-Free Organic eggs. These
are certified humane, according to Humane Farm Animal Care, and are inspected annually
by the organization.
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