The True Cost of a Dozen Eggs

I’m not generally a big organic buyer. I work for a big food manufacturer and am close enough to our operations that I haven’t been convinced that pesticides have been that pervasive or harmful in non-organic food. I have absorbed An Inconvenient Truth and I do my best, but I am no eco-evangelist of any kind. I want to buy sustainable, ethical products, and try when I think I can make a difference, but by and large, I’m frugal, and want to keep my food costs as low as possible.

I started to think about it a little differently after reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and hearing how government subsidies have turned our industrial food system on its head. The parts about corn-fed beef was pretty horrifying but what I thought was most powerful was the notion of true cost for food. While some products may be cheap, what’s the true cost of mass-producing and mass-transporting this food. What’s the true cost to our society – moral and economic? What’s the true cost to our healthcare system, after the impact of obesity and poor nutrition? What’s the true cost to our foreign policy, now that we’ve become utterly dependent on the cheap oil to fuel our cheap corn to fuel our cheap food across the supermarket?

Pollan’s arguments were insightful, but the main result of reading about the industrial food system, is that you realize that the price on the grocery tag doesn’t incorporate all of the costs. While you may not be paying those costs, you will most assuredly pay them later – through healthcare or taxes. His underlying premise is that you can’t just look away – you have to understand how the economics of the grocery store work:

“but this is what can happen to you when… you look. And what you see when you look is the cruelty – and blindness to cruelty – required to produce eggs that can be sold for seventy-nine cents a dozen” (Pollan)

I was in shock when I read about the egg operations for the majority of manufacturers – that they drive the animals to insanity and starvation, and factor into their business model a 10% premature death rate for the hens who can’t stand these conditions. If that’s the true cost, then I will be paying the premium from organic, sustainable eggs from now on.

Note, FruGal has another excellent post on a related topic: ethical shopping and being more aware of foul play in the grocery store supply chain)