A pair of tours of Ohio egg production facilities proved to be successful in answering questions and easing the minds of the visitors who didn’t have a firm understanding of how their eggs are produced.
Hana Bieliauskas, senior associate, Inspire PR Group, helped facilitate tours of egg farms and processing plants for the Ohio Poultry Association, in which bloggers were invited. She spoke favorably about the experiences while taking part in a panel discussion on May 8 at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in Kansas City, Missouri.
During one tour, Bieliauskas said bloggers wer invited to tour both a farm and an egg processing plant. Before the tour, the bloggers had heard all sorts of rumors about how horrible egg-laying hens were treated, but by the time the tour was completed, the bloggers had full confidence in the entire egg production process, she said.
“By the end of this tour, they were very much like: ‘Wow. I understand this. The farmers really do care. The birds are housed in cages for a reason.’ And then they also understood the difference between cage free and cage raised and why both might make sense and why there is a choice,” said Bieliauskas.
“I think that really brought them all the way around to understanding where their food came from.”
Blogger meets her egg farmer
During another tour, a blogger from Cleveland, Ohio, toured a Bob Evans restaurant, then went to the farm where the restaurant sources all of its eggs.
While at the farm, the blogger learned that the eggs she purchases at a grocery store in Cleveland were also raised at that far. She was so excited to make that connection, she posted a selfie of her and the farmer, announcing that he was her egg farmer.
“She thought that was so interesting because she met him,” Bieliauskas said.
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