Published by Susanna Speier under Kitchen, Sustainable Products

It’s spring and eggs—chicken’s eggs—are everywhere. Many people have the fun of boiling, cooling, and dyeing eggs for Easter; you can apply decals or even colorful stickers to them. Then there’s the big hunt—for the real thing as well as for the chocolate kind.

If you’re a Jew you can expect to see a burnt, whole, hard-boiled egg in its shell on your Seder plate. And later, you can expect to find more of them morphed into Matzo ball soup.

So whether your quest involves Passover, Easter, or just eggs for the sake of eggs, chances are you’ll end up in the refrigerated dairy section of your supermarket at some point this week. Once there, you have to make a selection among an increasingly various field of purchasing choices. And it will have to be made fast—before the kids break loose and bolt down aisle five looking for Peeps.

What kind of eggs will you buy? Jumbo versus medium? Okay, that seems simple enough. White versus brown? Easy-peasy.

But how about trying to differentiate among free range, natural, vegetarian, and organic? What, if anything, do those logos guarantee?

While you examine various cartons to inspect the labeling and attempt to decipher the hieroglyphs your kid is probably making a bee-line for the Manishevitz Macaroons.

Paul Shapiro, the Senior Director of the Humane Society of US Factory Farming Campaign, has kindly provided the following information for you. But caveat lector: let the reader beware—your eyes may glaze over on confronting language that reads more like legalese than user-friendly English. These label-deciphering suggestions do not guarantee that the farm-hens in question are being treated ethically or that their living conditions are humane. In fact, the only way to guarantee cruelty-free living conditions is to request an invitation. Ask if you can visit the farm you buy your eggs from and when you get there, trust your instincts to determine whether or not you are comfortable with what you see going on.

Egg Labels:

Certified Organic*: This means the birds may live uncaged inside barns or warehouses, and are required to have outdoor access (although issues have arisen as to lax enforcement, with some large-scale producers failing to provide birds with meaningful access to the outdoors).

They are fed an organic, all-vegetarian diet free of antibiotics and pesticides, as required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program.

Beak cutting and forced molting through starvation are permitted. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing.

Free-Range: While the USDA has defined the meaning of “free-range” for some poultry products, there are no standards in “free-range” egg production.

Typically, free-range egg-laying hens are uncaged inside barns or warehouses and have some degree of outdoor access. They can engage in many natural behaviors such as nesting and foraging. However, there is no information available as to stocking density – how many hens are crowded into a given volume of space – or the frequency or duration of outdoor access, or the quality of the land to which the birds are given access. Neither is there information regarding what the birds may be fed.

Beak cutting and forced molting through starvation are permitted. There is no third-party auditing.

Certified Humane*: The birds are uncaged inside barns or warehouses, but legally they may be kept indoors at all times.

They must be allowed to perform natural behaviors such as nesting, perching, and dust bathing. There are requirements for stocking density and the number of perches and nesting boxes.

Forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed.

Compliance is verified through third-party auditing. Certified Humane is a program of Humane Farm Animal Care.

Cage-Free: As the term implies, hens laying eggs labeled as “cage-free” are uncaged inside barns or warehouses, but generally do not have access to the outdoors. They have leave to engage in many of their natural behaviors such as walking, nesting, and spreading their wings.

Beak cutting and forced molting through starvation are permitted.

There is no third-party auditing.

Free-Roaming: Also known as “free-range,” this category has been defined by the USDA for some poultry products, but the authority provides no standards for “free-roaming” egg production. This essentially means the hens are cage-free.

There is no third-party auditing.

United Egg Producers Certified*: The overwhelming majority of the U.S. egg industry complies with this voluntary program, which permits factory farm practices that many people judge routine cruel and inhumane.

By 2008, hens laying these eggs were to have been afforded 67 square inches of cage space per bird, which is less area than is covered by a sheet of 8×11 paper.

The hens are confined in restrictive, barren cages and thus prohibited from performing many of their natural behaviors, such as perching, nesting, foraging or even spreading their wings.

Forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed.

Compliance is verified through third-party auditing. This is a program of the United Egg Producers.

Vegetarian-Fed: These birds’ feed may not contain animal byproducts (unlike that consumed by most laying hens), but this label has no bearing on the animals’ living conditions.

Natural: This label has no relevance to animal welfare.

Fertile: These eggs were laid by hens that lived with roosters, meaning they most likely were not caged.

Omega-3 Enriched: This label claim has no relevance to animal welfare.

* Labels that abide by official, audited guidelines. Please note that even these terms permit a wide variance in animal welfare practices.

If you’re still mulling over these mind-numbing differences at the supermarket, chances are you’ve lost your kids by now, or else they’re at your shopping-cart, egging you on to buy them chocolate bunnies. Happy holidays! Breathe.

“The best way to guarantee that the chickens are being treated ethically,” Shapiro says, is to “visit the farms they are raised on.” Unfortunately, that is not a realistic option for the vast majority of us.

But anyone interested in deciphering those cryptic supermarket egg cartons may visit the Human Society’s website for assistance. Another way to lobby for positive change is to sign the Humane Society petition urging our government to impose stronger regulations on poultry farms’ treatment of their charges.

With Passover beginning at sundown tonight, I am reminded of the four questions traditionally asked at the ritual Seder meal among whose fare is always included a burnt, whole, hard-boiled egg in its shell.

First: Why is this night different from all other nights?

Egg-lovers the world around can now ask this variation: Why is this egg different from all other eggs?

Susanna Speier writes for Earth911, The eCo Times and maintains a sustainability column for Examiner.com. She is also a screenwriter and a playwright. Memberships include The Dramatists Guild, Women in Film and The Hollywood Hill. Additional information about her work –including publication archives, production archives and plethoras of links– are available on her website