SPOTTING BROKEN EGGS MAY GET EASIER

Aug 29, 2023

Go ahead and admit it. You’re a Peeping Tom.

Or a Peeping Tomasina.

You reach into your grocer's refrigerated section, grab a dozen eggs and gently lift the carton's cover so you can see if any eggs are broken.

Now at long last, some U.S. grocers are eliminating that time-honored ritual by selling eggs in clear cartons. But something seemingly as basic as sliced bread hasn't had an easy arrival to consumers, however, because grocers were reticent to change a system that worked and see-through egg cartons cost more. Grocers are approaching this what-you- see-is-what-you-get packaging with mixed enthusiasm.

Three grocers with stores in Virginia have started taking the wraps off of their fragile little ovals. Farm Fresh, Ukrop's Super Markets and Harris Teeter are each selling eggs in clear cartons in some capacity. Farm Fresh, a Virginia Beach-based grocery-store chain, is the only one that has made the commitment to go exclusively with the transparent packages. Its 36 stores will soon begin phasing out its traditional egg packaging.

European grocers have been packing eggs in transparent containers for decades, but during the same period, American stores and egg producers didn't agree this was a patently obvious solution. One big reason: Millions of dollars are tied up in machines used to produce pulp or colored foam egg cartons. But if consumers saw a benefit from clearly viewing their eggs, why did it take so long for grocers to embrace the concept?

"Because I’ve been busy," quipped Farm Fresh president Ron Dennis.

"I have no idea," said Linda Braun, spokeswoman for the American Egg Board. "Obviously, clear packaging has been available for other products for quite some time."

"Because the cost has come down a lot," said Joel Goldberg, a sales manager at All-Star Packing. "The pulp and the foam cartons cost 61/2 cents apiece. The clear cartons cost 13 cents each." That's a big deal when a dozen AA large eggs at Farm Fresh recently cost $1.35.

So go the typical explanations for the evolution of American egg packaging from pulp to foam and now, finally, to clear polystyrene. Going way back, farmers, their family members and farmhands used baskets and even aprons to gather the eggs. Then came wooden crates. Chipboard, a material similar to cereal boxes that folded in the middle, was popular in the 1940s. In the late ’50s, eggs were protected better by pulp, or fiberboard, pressed into gray cardboard-like containers with saucers. Polystyrene foam made its debut in 1966 and forever changed the colors of the egg-carton landscape. Clear polystyrene cartons, which have been the egg cradle of choice in Europe for 38 years, only starting making inroads into the American market by 2000.

Dennis decided to take the clear route after studying the shopping habits of his grocery-store customers, not to mention his wife's.

"I’m in my stores anywhere from three to four days a week," he said. "As I observe our shoppers, the first thing they do when they’re shopping for eggs is open the carton to see if any of them are broken. We’ve gone as far as having our cashiers actually open the carton at the register. If any are broken, we send them back with a clerk. So we made this decision for two reasons: Customers are having to waste time opening the carton, and broken eggs are a sanitation issue."

The carton debate is more than the eggs are cracked up to be. Food safety also matters, as Dennis discovered when he looked in the refrigerator in his own home. He wanted egg buyers not to have to count on their memories to know when eggs were purchased and whether they are safe to eat. He could also use making his mark — literally — as a selling point.

"My wife comes home, takes the eggs out of the carton and puts them in a tray in the refrigerator," he said. "You don't know how long they’ve been in there. I wonder if those eggs are fresh."

So the chain now stamps a use-by date and the name Farm Fresh on each individual egg, so customers will know the edible deadline — and also will see the grocer's name every time they open the refrigerator. Farm Fresh's dated egg concept is a first in the U.S. for Ovotherm International, which produces the clear cartons. Some European countries require by law that each egg has to be dated, said Walter F. Baumann, Ovotherm spokesman.

A common misconception is that refrigerated eggs are good indefinitely. They are not. Eggs containing the bacteria salmonella enteritidis can create a food-borne illness with symptoms of fever, vomiting and severe abdominal pain that last for up to three weeks. In the United States, the American Egg Board estimates that only one in 20,000 eggs contains salmonella enteritidis, but the board insists that's why refrigerating and cooking eggs is so important. Eggs in a shell, properly refrigerated, are safe to eat for just three to five weeks from the packing date. Packagers often use Julian calendar dates on the cartons, starting with 001 for Jan. 1. So any eggs that were packed on Feb. 4 will have "035" stamped on the carton, said the American Egg Board's Braun.

Not all grocery-store chains are enraptured with the see-through cartons. For the past six months, Harris Teeter has been test-marketing the clear cartons of six-packs of eggs in its 141 stores throughout the southeastern U.S. to see if the containers reduce breakage and whether customers like them, said corporate spokeswoman Tara Stewart.

"We haven't had any complaints," she said. "It's still in the middle of the test, so it's too early to tell. We’ve used the pulp and the foam and gone back and forth between those throughout the years. The cost of the clear cartons is a little more, but we have not passed it on to the consumer. And if the test goes well, we will not pass it on."

Richmond-based Ukrop's is using the clear packages only for its Land O’ Lakes eggs.

Both Food Lion and Winn-Dixie are content with the cartons they have now.

"All of our dozen-egg containers are foam, and we have no plans to change to the plastic containers," said Jeff Lowrance, Food Lion spokesman. "We do have some of the corrugated pulp containers for the 18-count."

Winn-Dixie doesn't plan to switch to the clear cartons for one main reason: cost.

"They cost considerably more," said Mickey Clerc, Winn-Dixie spokesman. "Our charge as supermarket operators is to be the purchasing agents for our customers. Anything that would add to the cost without improving the quality of the eggs would probably not be accepted. Besides, a very high percentage of our customers always open the carton to check the eggs."

Dennis said Farm Fresh is not passing on the extra cost to the consumer but rather is taking less of a profit on the clear cartons of eggs.

Volume sold may make up the difference. At the Farm Fresh in Hampton's Willow Oaks Shopping Center Thursday, dairy and frozen foods manager Darryl Smith said his store sold a whole palette of clear-carton eggs in the past three days. There are seven boxes in a palette and 30 dozen eggs in each box.

"In this neighborhood, they go through some eggs," Smith said.

The Farm Fresh eggs come from Eggland's Best, a farm in North Carolina. The egg distributor provides the cartons.

The sequence starts with hens that produce unfertilized eggs. These egg-laying hens are the nuns of the chicken world — they’ve never even see a rooster in their lifetimes much less have a courtship. About an hour after an egg gets laid, it is gathered, washed and placed in a carton. The cartons are boxed and sent — refrigerated at an air temperature of 45 degrees or below — to the grocer.

"The main idea for the carton is they should first insulate the egg from jolts, because if you jolt them hard enough, they will break," said Braun. "Also, a carton prevents the loss of moisture and carbon dioxide. On every eggshell, there are anywhere from 7,000 to 17,000 pores."

In fertilized eggs, the purpose of the pores is to take in more air so the chick can grow.

"The eggs in supermarkets are never going to become chicks," Braun said. "But the pores are still there. The cartons help maintain temperature and keep the eggs from picking up undesirable odors. You certainly don't want to store eggs by onions or fish. We’ve even found that apples give them an off flavor, because the eggs are breathing in the air."

She recommends not taking eggs out of the carton to put them in the refrigerator door. Instead, she said, the best place is a lower shelf in the main body of the refrigerator.

"The whole idea of a frost-free refrigerator is it eliminates moisture, and while it's removing that moisture, it's also taking it out of your eggs," Braun said. "A carton is a barrier between your moisture and your eggs."

Because eggs are perishable, eventually they can dry up and will actually rattle when shaken.

"Polystyrene foam is really the best," said Goldberg, who sells all three kinds of cartons to more than 400 farmers nationwide. "Foam insulates the eggs — it can take a shock. The paper, if it gets damp or wet, doesn't work as well. Plus, you get the best print job on the foam cartons."

Many grocers and farmers like to have their name printed on the cartons.

The cost of producing the cartons also figures into why American distributors haven't jumped on the clear-carton bandwagon. A machine that makes molded pulp costs from $3 million to $4 million, Goldberg said.

Dow Chemical Co. and Olson Farms first made polystyrene foam egg cartons in 1966 on the West Coast. Combining their names, the carton manufacturing company is now called Dolco Packing Corporation.

"It was in response to escalating prices by the other material — molded pulp," said Phil Laughlin, Dolco spokesman. Polystyrene foam is slightly different from Styrofoam, a trademark of Dow Chemical, Laughlin said.

Dolco is the largest foam egg-carton manufacturer in the U.S. The Decatur, Ind.-based company produces egg cartons in eight colors: white, yellow, blue, pink, green, orange, beige and pearl.

Farm Fresh's clear cartons are made by Ovotherm, the Austrian company that pioneered the visible-egg concept in 1965. Since then Ovotherm has packed 9 billion eggs sold in 85 countries worldwide.

"For two years we are trying very hard to establish new relationships with U.S. egg producers and retailers with success," Baumann noted. "We ship directly to our partners in container loads with a lead time of four weeks."

For Farm Fresh, Ovotherm ships the cartons to egg broker Glennwood Foods LLC in Jetersville.

Clear-carton advantages, Bauman said, are customers being able to see the quality of the eggs without opening the carton, polystyrene is recyclable, and independent tests have shown a dramatic reduction in breakage while handling.

Besides keeping eggs from meeting the fate of Humpty Dumpty, Baumann pointed out another plus: Visible eggs stimulate impulse buying.

Farm Fresh currently sells eggs in the see-through cartons only by the dozen.

"My husband buys the clear cartons," said Mickie Rogonski, shopping in the Farm Fresh store on Coliseum Drive in Hampton. "Ron started buying those three or four weeks ago. He likes them because he can see the freshness date."

Mickie, however, was putting a pack of 18 eggs in a foam carton in her shopping cart. "I bought these because I do a lot of baking and I need a lot of eggs."

Sarah Sue Ingram can be reached at 247-4767 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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