News

Full of protein and essential vitamins, eggs are the perfect low cost, high quality meal.  With so many varieties of eggs, from white to brown, cage free to organic, and free range to omega-3, there are options for everyone.

According to a recent article on  www.lifehack.org, there are at least seven good reasons to eat eggs in the morning.

1. They keep you full.
The protein in eggs helps keep you satisfied longer by sustaining your energy levels.

2. They’re inexpensive.
Most large Grade A eggs cost around $2 per dozen.

3. They contribute to brain development and memory.
Eggs contain the nutrient choline, which stimulates brain development and function, and has been linked to increasing memory retention.

4. They won’t make your cholesterol worse.
Even though eggs contain a significant amount of cholesterol, it has been disproven that they’ll cause an increase in yours.

5. They’re a good source of protein.
Whole eggs are a good source of complete protein – meaning they contain all of the essential amino acids that we need in our diets.

6. They help with weight loss.
Two keys to losing weight are eating more protein and eating less food. Because of the protein level in eggs and the fact that they keep you satisfied longer, you’re more likely to stay on track if you’re trying to lose weight.

7. They protect your eyesight.
Eggs contain two antioxidants (leutin and zeaxanthin) that have been linked to protecting eyes from damage related to UV exposure. They have also been associated with reducing the likelihood of developing cataracts.

Group Health Commits to Cage-Free Eggs

Washington Association for Healthcare Foodservice tours Wilcox Family Farms

Group Health Cooperative’s Capitol Hill campus has made a commitment to using cage-free liquid and shell eggs. The hospital will be purchasing Wilcox liquid eggs and Davidson’s shell eggs. “We’ve used pasteurized shell eggs for years to avoid having to have a physician order to use shell eggs, and now Davidson’s pasteurized shell eggs are available as cage free so we’ve changed over,” says Mary Hanson, Manager of Nutrition Services.

Wilcox Farms is a Food Alliance-certified, 100-year old family farm located in Roy, Washington. Davidson’s is a national company based in Illinois. Their cage-free eggs are Certified Humane.

Group Health began purchasing the Washington-produced Wilcox cage-free liquid eggs when they became available through US Foods. “We made the change to Wilcox liquid eggs because they were a local producer.”

For the last two years, The Humane Society of the United States has sustained a massive effort asking hospitals and other major foodservice sectors to purchase cage-free eggs. In July 2011, the Humane Society of the United States and The United Egg Producers (the egg industry’s trade group) announced an historic agreement whereby both organizations will support—and work toward enactment of—federal legislation to improve the lives

of the 280 million hens used in the U.S. egg industry each year. Many thanks to the hospitals and businesses whose support made this possible!

Healthy Food in Health Care:  Washington’s Year in Review, December 2011

December 9, 2011

What are the chances of six double-yolkers?

By Wesley Stephenson BBC Radio 4, More or Less

What are the chances of finding half-a-dozen double-yolk eggs in a single box?

Last Sunday in a kitchen in suburban West London, what looked like a statistical miracle took place.

In the course of making profiteroles, two friends cracked four eggs one-by-one into a mixing bowl. The first was a double-yolker. The second, was also a
double-yolker. With a sense of anticipation they crack the third – again a double yolker.

Surely not the fourth as well? As they cracked the final egg, another double-yolker fell into the mixing bowl.

What are the odds against that happening?  Huge, one might suspect.

This actually happened to Jen Clarke, a colleague of the More or Less Team on Radio 4, and her friend Lynsey.

According to the British Egg Information Service, one in every thousand eggs on average is a double-yolker. They’re not sure how they’ve come to this figure but you would
like to think that the British Egg Information Service was able to supply useful information about British Eggs, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

So, if the probability of finding an egg with two yolks is 1/1000 – then to find the likelihood of discovering four in a row you simply multiply the probabilities together four times. One thousand to the power of four brings us to the grand total of one trillion – that’s the new-school US-style trillion with 12 zeroes.

If true that would mean the event that occurred in Jen’s kitchen was a trillion-to-one event. But is it true? No is the short answer.

It’s not as simple as that. What you have to consider is the fact that these eggs may be likely to come in clusters.

Here we need to turn to an expert. Richard Kempsey is agriculture director at Stonegate, which supplies eggs to supermarkets. He says double-yolked eggs almost always
come from young hens about 20-to-28 weeks old.

“In reality it gets its mechanics just slightly wrong. You get a young bird and it comes to lay its first egg and it releases more than one egg yolk. It forms a shell around the egg and out pops a rather large egg with two egg yolks in it.”

The chances of getting a double-yolk from one of these hens is much higher. One in every 100 eggs from these birds are double-yolk.

We’ve also learned from our research that the eggs in a box are very likely to come from the same flock, and flocks are usually around the same age. On that basis we can say that while chance of finding one double-yolk egg may be 1/1000, the chance of finding a second is considerably higher – more like 1/100.

And the same goes for the third and fourth eggs. So taking all that into account lets do the sum 1000 x 100 x 100 x 100 – that equals one billion – so the probability of finding four eggs in a row in a single box is one in a billion.

A one-in-a-billion event is still pretty big, although compared to a one-in-a-trillion chance the difference is huge. A trillion is 1000 bigger than a billion and amounts to the difference between something happening once a week compared with once every 20 years.

So the event that occurred in Jen’s kitchen was a billion-to-one event? Probably not. There’s another big factor we need to consider – the size of the eggs. Double-yolk eggs are far more likely to be large. Yet the eggs that young birds lay are normally small.

Any large eggs that are laid would be picked out and boxed together. This means if you find a large double-yolk egg – and you know the other eggs in the box are from the same young flock – then the chance that the other eggs are also double-yolkers becomes a lot more likely. In the most extreme case, you’d find that if the first egg is a double-yolker, all the eggs are double-yolkers.

So bearing all this in mind what happened when we went back to the last two eggs in Jen’s box? Well as if to prove us right it turned out egg five and egg six were both double-yolkers.

On our initial naive reading this would be a one-in-a-quintillion double-yolk streak. But as with most things there’s actually a more obvious explanation.

Linda Thomas Interview: Family Businesses 2011

Brent and Chris Wilcox shared the Wilcox Family Farms story with Linda Thomas of KIRO news radio on a recent segment about local family businesses.  Follow the link above to hear Brent and Chris share their family’s story and hear more about what makes Wilcox Family Farms unique.

The Wilcox family at the 2011 Excellence in Family Business Awards ceremony    

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Wilcox Family Farms had the opportunity to participate in a Good Egg Project Community Breakfast with our friends from the American Egg Board, fellow Northwest Egg Farmers, and Chef Jeffery Saad.  More than 700 people in need were provided a hearty, egg-filled, breakfast here in Seattle.  In addition, 60,000 eggs were donated to Food Lifeline and Second Harvest by Northwest Egg Farmers!  We are proud to have helped continue the fight against hunger by donating 10,800 farm fresh Wilcox eggs.

Community Breakfast Feeds Nearly 800 Hungry People

Nearly 800 hungry people in the Seattle area received a free meal at our Community Egg Breakfast supported by Northwest Egg Farmers. Guests were joined by members of the Seattle Police Department’s Community Outreach Section, whose officers took to the streets to personally deliver those individuals (more than 150) who were in need of a hot meal but without adequate transportation.

“Our goal is to build long lasting relationships with the community that we serve,” said Officer A.B. Chapackdee, with the Seattle Police Department’s Community Outreach Section. “An event like this definitely captures the essence of what we’re about.”

One in seven households in Washington couldn’t afford enough food last year which is why Northwest Egg Farmers also donated 60,000 eggs to Food Lifeline to distribute to the more than 686,000 hungry people the organization serves each year. The need among food banks continues to grow, especially for high-quality protein foods, like eggs, which help build muscle and allow people to feel full longer and stay energized.

The donation and breakfast were part of Hunger Action Month, and the Good Egg Project, an initiative by America’s egg farmers to educate people about where eggs come from and to encourage Americans to help fight hunger in the United States.

http://www.foodlifeline.org/news/calendar/index.cfm

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a non-profit organization devoted to encouraging the responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC sets high standards that ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable way.

Landowners and companies that sell timber or forest products seek certification as a way to verify to consumers that they have practiced forestry consistent with FSC standards. Independent, certification organizations are accredited by FSC to carry out assessments of forest management to determine if standards have been met. These certifiers also verify that companies claiming to sell FSC certified products have tracked their supply back to FSC certified sources. This chain of custody certification assures that consumers can trust the FSC label.

Consumers wishing to support healthy forests and communities should look and ask for the FSC label when purchasing wood or paper products.

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2011) — One of nature’s most perfect foods may be even better for us than previously thought.

While eggs are well known to be an excellent source of proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals, researchers at the University of Alberta recently discovered they also contain antioxidant properties, which helps in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Jianping Wu, Andreas Schieber and graduate students Chamila Nimalaratne and Daise Lopes-Lutz of the U of A Department of Agricultural Food and Nutritional Science examined egg yolks produced by hens fed typical diets of either primarily wheat or corn. They found the yolks contained two amino acids, tryptophan and tyrosine, which have high antioxidant properties.

After analyzing the properties, the researchers determined that two egg yolks in their raw state have almost twice as many antioxidant properties as an apple and about the same as half a serving (25 grams) of cranberries.

However, when the eggs were fried or boiled, antioxidant properties were reduced by about half, and a little more than half if the eggs were cooked in a microwave.

“It’s a big reduction but it still leaves eggs equal to apples in their antioxidant value,” said Wu.

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Chemistry.

The discovery of these two amino acids, while important, may only signify the beginning of finding antioxidant properties in egg yolks, said Wu, an associate professor of agricultural, food and nutritional science.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to map antioxidants in egg yolks so we have to look at all of the properties in the yolks that could contain antioxidants, as well as how the eggs are ingested,” said Wu, adding that he and his team will examine the other type of antioxidant already known to be in eggs, carotenoids, the yellow pigment in egg yolk, as well as peptides.

In previous research, Wu found that egg proteins were converted by enzymes in the stomach and small intestines and produced peptides that act the same way as ACE inhibitors, prescriptions drugs that are used to lower high blood pressure.

That finding defied common wisdom and contradicted the public perception that eggs increased high blood pressure because of their high cholesterol content. Additional research by Wu suggests the peptides can be formulated to help prevent and treat hypertension.

Wu is convinced the peptides also have some antioxidant properties, which leads him to suggest that when he completes the next step in his research, the result will likely be that eggs have more antioxidant properties than we currently know.

Once rivals, groups will press for federal laws on hen housing
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press

The Humane Society of the United States says it won’t lobby for additional restrictions if new standards for egg-laying hens it has negotiated with United Egg Producers are passed as federal law.

The proposal would require egg producers to phase in cages giving hens 124 to 144 square inches over the next 15 to 18 years at an estimated cost of $4 billion. Most of the 280 million egg-laying hens now live in cages giving each 67 square inches of space. Roughly 50 million have 48 square inches.

Focused on deal

HSUS is focused on getting its agreement with United Egg Producers enacted into law and is not going to come back afterward seeking greater restrictions, said Paul Shapiro, senior director of HSUS’s Factory Farming Campaign.

“No one knows what will happen in 15 years, but you won’t see either group try to modify it in the near future if we get it enacted,” Shapiro said.

Other animal welfare groups, such as Farm Sanctuary, are not part of the agreement but are not likely to lobby for greater restrictions either, Shapiro said.

“Right now we’re just looking at this agreement and supporting it and currently have no plans to push anything else,” said Gene Baur, president of Farm Sanctuary. “It is a reasonable compromise but not as much as we would like.”

The group opposes colony cages.

“We don’t think they provide good hen welfare but they are better than (current) barren battery cages so they are a step in the right direction,” he said.

Farm Sanctuary will actively work to get the UEP-HSUS agreement enacted, he said.

This is the sixth agreement HSUS has reached with ag groups on policies and it has not sought greater restrictions after reaching those agreements, Shapiro said. Those agreements were in Michigan, Colorado, Maine, Ohio and California and involved veal and pork, he said.

UEP and HSUS are now working to find congressional sponsors for the legislation in hopes of passing a bill before the current Congress wraps up at the end of 2012.

HSUS will continue advocating that consumers and corporations switch to cage-free eggs. The agreement’s new labeling system will give consumers information they need to reach for higher animal welfare standards, Shapiro said.

United Egg Producers will work equally hard with HSUS for passage of a bill, said Mitch Head, UEP spokesman.

If passed into law it would be the first time any species of farm animal has federal protection and would be the first federal farm animal protection law in more than 30 years, Shapiro said.

HSUS and UEP announced an agreement July 7, signaling a truce after more than 10 years of battles in courts, legislatures and through initiative campaigns, Head said.

The groups agreed to work jointly for federal legislation for new standards on housing most of the 280 million egg-laying hens in the nation. In return, HSUS agreed to drop its ballot initiative efforts in Washington, Oregon and not begin new initiatives in other states. Both sides have agreed not to instigate new lawsuits against each other and none are pending.

The agreement was announced just one day before HSUS and Washingtonians for Humane Farms planned to submit more than 355,000 voter signatures to get a cage-free initiative on Washington’s Nov. 8 general election ballot.

An initiative was planned in Oregon for next year.

Producers happy

“America’s egg producers have continually worked to improve animal welfare and we strongly believe our commitment to a national standard for hen welfare is in the best interest of our animals, customers and consumers,” UEP chairman Bob Krouse said in a joint press release with HSUS. A national standard is better than a “patchwork of state laws” that would be cumbersome and confusing to customers and consumers.

“Passing this bill would be an historic improvement for hundreds of millions of animals per year,” HSUS president Wayne Pacelle said in the release.

He thanked producers for agreeing to invest in “meaningful” improvements in hen housing.

The legislation would supersede state laws in Arizona, California, Michigan and Ohio and those passed this spring in Washington and Oregon.

The groups also note Proposition 2, which was passed by California voters in 2008. UEP and HSUS will ask Congress to require California egg producers to eliminate conventional cages for their 20 million laying hens by 2015, the date the proposition was to go into effect. All hens will be provided with space and environmental improvements other states will phase in over the next 15 to 18 years.

These requirements would apply to the sale of all eggs and egg products in California.

“I think it’s great. This is a huge step in pursuing a uniform national standard,” said Greg Satrum, president of the Northwest Poultry Council and vice president of Willamette Egg Farms, Canby, Ore., a major producer in Oregon and Washington.

“Having UEP and HSUS in agreement on a standard is a huge landmark,” he said. His father, Gordon Satrum, is on the UEP board.

Satrum said if passed, Washington Initiative 1130 would have virtually mandated cage-free housing, jeopardizing the industry.

The federal proposal doesn’t go that far but requires enriched colony cages, which offer a bit more room per hen than legislation passed this year in Washington and Oregon, he said.

It is a sustainable system the industry can live with, he said, but he thinks the estimated $4 billion price tag is low.

“In just looking at our own experience with building costs, we’re estimating it will cost our company in the neighborhood of $50 million over the next 15 to 18 years,” he said.

Asked if that’s affordable, he said, “I hope so.”

European research shows an 8 to 10 percent increase in production costs in moving from conventional to colony cages and a 25 to 40 percent increase going from conventional to cage-free, Satrum said.

Consumers will see an increase in retail egg prices with colony systems but not nearly as much as with cage-free, he said.

The national proposal gives producers more time to transition and provides uniformity, preventing market disruptions, production imbalances among regions of the country and lessens the chance of greater reliance on eggs imported from other countries, Satrum said.

Compromise praised

Although HSUS opposes cages, Shapiro said the organization agreed to the enriched colony cages because the proposal would extend restrictions to states the group might otherwise lack political options.

“Most hens are in states that don’t even have ballot initiatives,” Shapiro said. “Of course we prefer cage-free, but this is an improvement for all birds not just a state or two.”

The agreement was a compromise with both sides giving “more than a little,” he said.

There are people on both sides of the issue who are unhappy, from fellow livestock producers fearing a precedent that will harm them to some animal welfare groups disappointed HSUS “caved” on its demands for cage-free egg production, Head said.

Shapiro agreed.

“We’ve been political adversaries for some time and that we came together and found common ground speaks volumes to the importance of this (proposed) legislation,” Shapiro said.

Small producers probably will be exempt from the legislation. Producers with fewer than 3,000 hens were exempted from new FDA egg food safety standards a year ago, Head said.

UEP represents 200 commercial egg farms and about 85 percent of national production, Head said.

Satrum’s Willamette Egg Farms has 2 million hens in Oregon and Washington. There are hardly any producers between 3,000 and 300,000 hens, Satrum said.

Dynes Farms, in Burlington, Wash., has 250,000 hens. Sales manager David Dynes said he likes that the playing field will be leveled but otherwise dislikes that producers will be required to convert to less efficient systems for more money.

“It goes against good old-fashioned capitalism. It’s doing less for more,” he said.

Jon Stiebrs, owner of Stiebrs Farms in Yelm, Wash., with 400,000 hens, said he supports the deal because it’s achievable and allows interstate commerce. He said he’s 60 percent cage-free and moving in that direction.

The East and West coasts probably would have had more regulations on egg farms than the Midwest, said Brent Wilcox, president of Wilcox Farms in Roy, Wash.

“It would have got messy fast. This keeps it consistent,” he said.

It won’t affect Wilcox Farms, which has been moving entirely to cage-free egg production for five years, he said.

Egg agreement at glance

The agreement reached between the United Egg Producers and the Humane Society of the United States seeks federal legislation that would:

• Require producers to replace conventional cages used by more than 90 percent of the industry with enriched housing systems that nearly double the space for each hen.
• Require perches, nesting boxes and scratching areas.
• Require producers to label all egg cartons as eggs from caged hens, enriched cages, cage-free or free-range hens.
• Prohibit the withholding of feed and water to cause molting to extend laying cycles.
• Require American Veterinary Medical Association-approved standards for euthanasia of egg-laying hens.
• Prohibit excessive ammonia levels in hen houses.
• Prohibit sale of eggs and egg products nationwide that don’t meet these requirements.