Unscrambling the Egg Disaster

September 28, 2010, By JAMES MCWILLIAMS

" --------- Writing in the Atlantic’s Food Channel, Barry Estabrook, former editor at Gourmet magazine, categorically condemned 'industrial-scale factory farming' as 'the cause of virtually every instance of bacterial food contamination the country has experienced in recent years.' It’s the 'huge farms and processors,' he explains, rather than the 'small producers who live near us' that 'have given us' E. coli, salmonella and listeria. Estabrook, who raises a posse of his own chickens in a backyard horse barn, was challenged by a reader to have his birds tested for salmonella. Admirably, he did. Verdict: clean. --------------

For all the intuitive logic supporting Estabrook’s argument (not to mention the clean bill of health awarded his birds), others are less convinced that industrial farming per se is the problem. In a CNN interview, Professor Michael Lacy, who heads Poultry Science at the University of Georgia, explained, 'I know of no research that shows large-sale egg farming is less safe than any other,' adding that 'there is no scientific evidence that free-range or organic eggs are less prone to S. Enteritidis.' Darrell Trampel, an Iowa State poultry diagnostician, agreed, telling Newsweek, 'Even today, we find Salmonella Enteritidis on small organic farms—it’s not just the big ones.' "

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/unscrambling-the-egg-disaster/