Being a consumer is difficult. There are so many brands and products to choose from one needs a scorecard to keep track.
Especially when it comes to that family staple, eggs. There are pasture-raised eggs, or eggs laid by free-range hens, or cage-free hens, or hens eating organic feed. We also have a choice of purchasing brown eggs.
Things weren’t this complicated when National Mellody had a huge egg farm on property back in the day owned by industrialist John Cuneo along Butterfield Road, close to where the Gregg’s Landing neighborhood is in the Vernon Hills, Libertyville and Mundelein nexus. No brown eggs there, just plain old white ones laid by more than 300,000 hens in row upon row of cages piled in tiers inside a sprawling building. Upward of 170,000 eggs were laid daily, and were mainly destined for the old National Tea grocery stores Cuneo controlled.
Egg choices (anyone for quail eggs?) and packaging (hard plastic containers or cardboard containers) are actually so tough today, according to one consumer, that he had to file a federal lawsuit last fall in U.S. District Court in Chicago. He alleged his local Kroger-owned Mariano’s grocery sold eggs labeled “farm fresh,” which he strongly felt was a misnomer.
According to a Chicago Tribune business story earlier this week, Adam Sorkin argued he believed the “farm fresh” characterization meant the eggs were produced by layers who lived “on farms, with open green space, grass, hay and straw.” Ah, the idyllic rural past of America continues to drift in and out of our consumer subconscious.
Like thinking unrefrigerated Kraft Parmesan cheese is really “100% cheese,” discounting the fact it contains cellulose, made from wood pulp and used as an anti-clumping agent so the cheese flows freely from its handy canister. That product also was the target of a consumer lawsuit nearly a decade ago.
The plaintiffs also should have known Kraft’s Parmesan should not have been confused with the real stuff from Parma in northern Italy, which also is home to delicious prosciutto ham. Or anything produced in Parma, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb.
Sorkin said he believed “farm fresh” gives “favorable impressions in consumers,” such as a farmer getting up with roosters to gather warm eggs from straw nests and rushing them to the local general store. Undoubtedly with Looney Tunes rooster Foghorn Leghorn beside him strutting around his barnyard bailiwick.
There are several ranchettes in Lake County where, indeed, you can buy “farm fresh” eggs directly without the supermarket middlepersons. Hand-painted signs tell motorists where to stop if they want from-the-farm eggs.
Instead, Sorkin found “farm fresh” could mean chickens were in large, industrial laying facilities, like National Mellody. The suit against Mariano’s alleged the company’s egg labeling violated the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.
As any attorney will tell you, anybody can sue anybody. They also will caution that you may not win. Which is what happened to Sorkin, at least so far, after U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras dismissed his case.
Eggs can be “farm fresh” even if they are produced by hens living at a factory farm, as was the National Mellody facility, the judge ruled. The complaint, he said, failed to prove that most shoppers believe the “farm fresh” label guarantees that they were produced, “on some sort of idyllic farm with a red barn, an abundance of hay, and hens frolicking in Elysian green pastures.”
The company didn’t say the “farm fresh” eggs came from hens that were cage-free or free-range. The plaintiff, the jurist noted, had a, “legally unreasonable interpretation of the product label.”
Some might say common sense would come into play here, but apparently not. “Farm fresh” means just that, fresh from an egg farm of any size. Egg farmers say their products usually reach grocery stores within 72 hours of laying.
Certainly, there are plenty of scams targeting consumers, but the egg suit wasn’t one of them. “Words don’t mean whatever we want them to mean,” the judge pointed out, adding, “plaintiff can’t sue based on every fanciful idea that springs to mind after reading the label.”
Since the McDonald’s coffee case 30 years ago, customers have been quick to seek legal redress when they feel they’ve been damaged or taken advantage of by companies. The so-called “hot coffee lawsuit” dates from 1994, when a customer bought coffee from a McDonald’s, accidentally spilled it in her lap and suffered third-degree burns, ended up in a hospital for eight days, sued the fast-food chain and eventually won a substantial settlement.
As for the National Mellody egg farm, continued chicken-waste odor complaints to Illinois environmental officials from neighbors along Butterfield and Allanson roads led to its closure. Besides, the land was more valuable for housing and commercial than used for laying eggs.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
X: @sellenews