See how your eggs scored in watchdog ratings
PCC’s organic eggs and eggs from two PCC suppliers received top ratings in a scorecard from the Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit consumer education and watchdog organization.
PCC organic eggs, Wilcox Organic Pasture eggs (which supplies PCC’s private label eggs), and Everson-based Misty Meadows Farm, also stocked at PCC stores, received the “5-egg” rating. Criteria included quality access to the outdoors, flock size, housing quality, how chicks are sourced, survival rates of hens, environmental impact, practices that allow the hens natural behaviors (such as not debeaking them) and commitment to the organic label, among others. Transparency also factors into the scores—companies might receive a zero score for a given criteria if producers do not provide the information and the nonprofit cannot gather it independently.
Thirty-one egg companies nationwide received the top rating; the other Washington farmers on that list are Skagit River Ranch in Sedro-Woolley (see profile here), Ellensburg-based Windy N Ranch and Skokomish Valley Farms in Shelton.
Cornucopia said in a press release that it compiled the rankings through surveys, independent research and the work of its organic investigator.
PCC worked with Wilcox to bring on mobile hen houses and create a new line of pastured eggs for the co-op in 2018. In 2020 PCC adopted a standard that all our suppliers of fresh chicken eggs must allow their hens access to the outdoors, one of the first and only major grocery chains to achieve this higher standard (click here for more information). Among PCC’s many other requirements, laying hens must be able to dust bathe and have space to spread their wings, and their outdoor access cannot be exclusively concrete and should be covered vegetation, gravel, straw, mulch or sand.
Read the entire Cornucopia Institute report here.