Egg recall drives worried customers to farmers markets

Jackie Dearing of Bloomington, Ill., sold all of her 50 dozen eggs at the local farmers market on Saturday, including carton after carton to new customers worried about a large and growing salmonella scare linked to millions of grocery store eggs.

“Almost everybody who came to our booth mentioned it,” said Dearing, whose family runs Dearing Country Farms, a small-scale meat and poultry business. “Anytime something like this happens, people think a lot more about where their food comes from.”
As a recall of more than 550 million eggs tied to two industrial manufacturers widens, small egg farmers across the United States are echoing Dearing’s experience. Sales of eggs at farmers markets, co-operatives and roadside stands reportedly spiked over the weekend as news of the outbreak linked to at least 1,300 illnesses reached shoppers.
“I think this is the consumer’s way of saying, ‘Until this blows over, I’ll get my eggs from another source,’” said Susan S. Joy, general manager of the Nebraska Poultry Industries, an agency based in Lincoln, Neb., that represents all branches of the turkey and egg industry including both small growers and large farms.
At a farmer’s market in Redmond, Wash., Sue Martinell of Sky Valley Family Farm sold out of 80 dozen chicken eggs on Saturday, leaving only duck eggs to buy.
Customers lined up for eggs at stalls at the Inner Sunset Farmers Market in San Francisco from the time the market opened until they sold out, said Elizabeth Howe, regional manager of the Pacific Coast Farmer’s Market Association.
Story: Do you have any bad eggs? “People are realizing that it’s not the safest decision to buy eggs shipped from huge factory farms in the Midwest, where traceability and accountability is limited,” she said. “At the farmers’ market, you can shake the hand of the farmer who collected your egg that morning and I think that is much more reassuring.”