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Betsy Babcock on The Changing American Egg Industry · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: and that's a Bloomberg business flash. You're listening to taking
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  Speaker 1: stock with pim Box and Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 1: The egg industry, the egg industry is a ten billion
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  Speaker 1: dollar a year business and just in April alone, more
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  Speaker 1: than seven billion eggs were produced in the United States.
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  Speaker 1: But what kind of eggs? Well, here to tell us
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  Speaker 1: is the co founder of Handsome Brooke Farm, Betsy Babcock,
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  Speaker 1: and she joins us now, Betsy, thanks very much for
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  Speaker 1: being with us. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Before we
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  Speaker 1: get into the details of comparing one kind of egg
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  Speaker 1: production to another, I'm just warning if you could give
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  Speaker 1: us some background and explain how did you become a
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  Speaker 1: farmer an egg farmer? I would say that I am
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  Speaker 1: the accidental eggs farmer. We started um Handsome Brook Farm
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  Speaker 1: back in two thousand and seven as a farm state
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  Speaker 1: that in breakfast at Upstate New York, and we were
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  Speaker 1: about three and a half hours from New York City,
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  Speaker 1: and our customers who would come stay with us were
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  Speaker 1: raving about our eggs. And what we learned quickly was
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  Speaker 1: what made our eggs different from what they could get
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  Speaker 1: in the grocery store was that our chickens were actually outdoors,
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  Speaker 1: eating bugs and grass and outside, and that makes a
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  Speaker 1: huge difference in terms of quality and taste in the egg.
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  Speaker 1: And so from two thousand and seven until now, we
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  Speaker 1: have formed a model where we work with other small
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  Speaker 1: farms who produce eggs with chickens that are going outside
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  Speaker 1: eating bugs, and market it at Handsome Brook Farm past
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  Speaker 1: your raised eggs. So it's been very exciting. Matt Miller
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  Speaker 1: here joining pen to day. I love eggs, and when
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  Speaker 1: I go to the store, I want to buy eggs
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  Speaker 1: that aren't from chickens who suffered some kind of horrible
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  Speaker 1: baraca kind of life, you know. So I always try
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  Speaker 1: and get eggs that say they're organic, that their cage free,
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  Speaker 1: and that they're free roaming. I imagine my chickens walking
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  Speaker 1: around and pecking it stuff. Those chickens you're telling me
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  Speaker 1: are actually raised in a barn crowded in with fifty
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  Speaker 1: two hundred thousand other chickens. Is that true? That is
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  Speaker 1: corrected so many cases in a cage free environment. Even
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  Speaker 1: though it's sounds perhaps like the chickens are going outside
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  Speaker 1: in being chicken like outside, unfortunately the case in most
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  Speaker 1: cases that those chickens are confined with about one square
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  Speaker 1: foot of space inside and no u no outdoor engagement
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  Speaker 1: at all. And the same can go for free range
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  Speaker 1: is a very broad term. Pre range chickens may never
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  Speaker 1: step foot outside, or in some better cases, they may
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  Speaker 1: have a little bit of outside area. But there's no
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  Speaker 1: legal definition or requirement for a free range chicken to
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  Speaker 1: spend outside on pasture. So your chickens are pasture, your
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  Speaker 1: eggs are pasture raised. That means your chickens are actually
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  Speaker 1: walking around outside in the sunlight. Is there some kind
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  Speaker 1: of regulation um that guarantees me when I go to
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  Speaker 1: a store and I see pasture raised that I know
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  Speaker 1: that this chicken lived a pretty decent life. There's no
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  Speaker 1: legal definition or no federal regulation for pasture raised. What
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  Speaker 1: we do now, we started doing this in this year,
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  Speaker 1: actually is participating in the American Humane certification process. And
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  Speaker 1: so when you see a pasture raised egg, that has
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  Speaker 1: an American Humane logo on it. That means that they
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  Speaker 1: are meeting specific outdoor requirements and so you can have
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  Speaker 1: some assurance that those chickens are actually going outside on vegetation,
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  Speaker 1: not just on a concrete patio, but outside on vegetation. Betsy,
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  Speaker 1: what's the difference between pasture raised conventional eggs and pasture
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  Speaker 1: raised organic eggs? For we, we carry both. We offer both.
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  Speaker 1: Most of the eggs that we sell our pasture raised organic.
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  Speaker 1: We have some that are pastor raised conventional, which is
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  Speaker 1: actually how we started um. And the difference for us
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  Speaker 1: is really the pastures themselves are both not sprayed and
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  Speaker 1: could qualify, you know, as an organically grown pasture. There's
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  Speaker 1: no sprayer, herbicides. But the difference is the feed that
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  Speaker 1: they get, because even chickens that are outside on pasture
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  Speaker 1: need to have some supplemental feed. So for pasture raised organic,
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  Speaker 1: the feed that we provide our chickens is organic feed,
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  Speaker 1: certified organic feed. For the conventional pasture raised that feed
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  Speaker 1: is not certified organic. So the differences in the feed.
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  Speaker 1: What about the price, any any differences in price? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the price for organic again for us runs about fifty
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  Speaker 1: to seventy a dozen more than the price for the
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  Speaker 1: conventional and that's because of the difference between the cost
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  Speaker 1: of the organic feed versus a conventional feed. But one
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  Speaker 1: one interesting now perhaps is that even though the organic
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  Speaker 1: pasture raised are a little bit more expensive, most of
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  Speaker 1: our our sales are the organic. People are willing to
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  Speaker 1: pay more for pasture raised organic. Yeah. I was gonna
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  Speaker 1: ask about that. I mean, for me when I go
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  Speaker 1: to the grocery store, I don't. I mean, I'll pay
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  Speaker 1: as much as I have to, uh to get that
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  Speaker 1: image of a chicken getting its beak melted off out
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  Speaker 1: of my mind. Um, to your customers care, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: our price is elastic at all, they do care. I
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  Speaker 1: mean philosophically, we really want to make our eggs as
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  Speaker 1: affordable as possible for customers, so we do not gouge
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  Speaker 1: on our pricing to customers. Um. But people are willing
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  Speaker 1: to pay for the quality and for the animal welfare,
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  Speaker 1: so they will pay a premium for a pastor raised
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  Speaker 1: organic egg over a free range or a cage free X.
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  Speaker 1: I wish you could do it, Bacon. I wish you probably, Betsy. Betsy,
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  Speaker 1: thanks so much, really appreciate you joining US, and I
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  Speaker 1: think it's a fascinating topic that a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: really do care about. So, uh, there you go. Pasture
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  Speaker 1: raised eggs are the ones that you probably want to get.
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  Speaker 1: Betsy Babcock is the co founder of Handsome Brook Farm
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  Speaker 1: and they sell those eggs, and she gave us all
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  Speaker 1: the info that we probably could have could have learned
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  Speaker 1: in in at ten minute interview on eggs. Pim This
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