In order for eggs to be resold in Oregon they must be ‘handled’ based on the ODA regulations. On the mass of the eggs this makes some sense- if you the carton says ‘large’ you should have some assurance that you’re really getting a large dozen. I have not issue with this….my problem is that we are no a large producer that has several outlets for non-large eggs. Our older hens drop jumbos and our younger hens drop medium sized eggs. Unfortunately there are no provisions in the regulations for an ‘as-laid’ dozen. Nor is there a provision that says individual eggs can be any size as long as it adds up to a ‘large’ dozen.

So what do we do with jumbo and medium eggs? These eggs have to go into the unlicensed carton. The ODA did offer a suggestion- if I was to label the carton ‘PEEWEE’ eggs then I could put any size egg into the carton as there is no restriction on the maximum size of an egg- just the minimum. Sounded good for a while- but we starting thinking about how many people actually will look inside a carton and determine what size the eggs really are. Selling direct we can talk, explain, somewhat rationalize what we do…but not from a grocery shelf. So back to large eggs.

Check out the fancy new label! Here!

Down side of all this is this pretty label costs about 19 cents a pop!! And, of course, grocery stores want lower prices- yet it costs a premium to package the eggs for them. All this started when the ODA was reading this blog - found out I was selling eggs to Scanlons and wrote us saying we needed a license. So it goes…. Does Scanlons care about a label? Do we? Nope. I know I have ranted about this before but Camus says it best - “Integrity has no need for rules!”.