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Chicken Eggs


Rail Paul

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I did not work as a grader long enough to be able to tell AA from A. An AA or A egg is fresh (white is thick--you can see this as you candle the egg and see how quickly the yolk moves in the white), yolk is not broken, shell is pretty (no wrinkles or cracks) and the egg is the proper size.

Something that struck me as odd was that the GRADE A designation is not protected--anybody can put "Grade A" on an egg carton. USDA Grade A eggs or meat have a shield about the size of your thumbnail somewhere on the carton, and that means a government employee worked at the plant, and sampled product to see if it met standards. Otherwise, plant employees inspect and sample products to see if they meet PLANT standards, which may or may not be the same as USDA standards. Which is not necessarily a bad thing--the plants have a vested interest in making sure that product is of good quality.

The Tyson chicken plants that I worked in down in SW MO and AR were clean, and I have no hesitation at all about eating commercial chicken (except that real chicken tastes better). The egg places were smelly and not quite so clean.

sparrowgrass
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