Santa Cruz Sentinel: Looking for a Good Egg?

Checking with New Leaf’s marketing director Sarah Miles, I found out the store has been buying eggs from cage-free suppliers for three years. That means chickens are allowed to roam rather than being confined to cages.

“We have firmly established prices and relationships with our suppliers like Glaum Egg Ranch in Aptos, and we are now announcing our policy and ongoing commitment to selling only cage-free eggs,” Miles explained.

New Leaf has five stores in Santa Cruz County and sells more than 1.5 million eggs a year. It also buys from Judy’s Family Farm in Petaluma and Chino Valley Ranchers in Arcadia.

Last summer, Glaum Egg Ranch was the first major California egg producer to be certified by Humane Farm Animal Care, a nonprofit with a certification and labeling program for meat, eggs, dairy and poultry products.

Other local stores carrying eggs with that certification are: Aptos Natural Foods, Deluxe Foods, Ben Lomond Market, Scotts Valley Market, Shopper’s Corner, Staff of Life and Johnnie’s Market. Humane Farm Animal Care keeps a database of retailers at www.certifiedhumane.com.

The cage-free movement got rolling three years ago after the Better Business Bureau ruled that it was misleading to label eggs from hens crammed into cages as “Animal Care Certified.”

The Humane Society took its campaign to college campuses, winning support from Santa Clara University, Stanford, UC Berkeley and 100 others. For details, see www.hsus.org.