The Cornucopia Institute’s report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture, will empower consumers and wholesale buyers who want to invest their food dollars to protect hard-working family farmers that are in danger of being forced off the land by a landslide of eggs from factory farms.

The accompanying organic egg scorecard rates companies that market name-brand and private-label organic “shell” eggs based on 28 criteria that are important to organic consumers. The scorecard showcases ethical family farms, and their brands, and exposes factory farm producers and brands in grocery store coolers that threaten to take over organic livestock agriculture.

The scorecard also profiles some emerging brands that advertise their eggs as “pastured” although their birds are housed in fixed buildings -versus- the true gold standard in organic egg production: generally smaller flocks of poultry in portable henhouses which farmers rotate in fresh pasture, often-times daily.

Some of the factory farm operators literally raise millions of birds (both conventional and organic) with as many as 150,000-200,000 “organic” hens in single buildings.