Food web vs food chain. I'll use the crazy egg recall as an example.
posted on
June 13, 2025
At Miller's, we're building a food web. This is a lot different than the modern food chain most Americans rely on.
A food chain is a factory-filled engine.
Here are the links that usually make up the food chain. Mega feed mills and fertilizer plants --> mega factory farms --> mega processing plants --> mega distributors --> mega supermarkets. And in between all of those things are mega supplies and transportation companies.
When one link breaks, the whole chain goes down! Sure, it's made food more affordable. But, it's also made our food system fragile.
Let's use the egg recall that's happening right now as an example. It's a conventional egg recall (NOT our eggs, which we have plenty of btw).
The current salmonella outbreak has sickened at least 89 people to date. It's affected 1.7 million cartons of eggs in 9 states, starting in March. Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten contaminated eggs.
Wow, I mean, that's awful on such a big scale.
But, here's what's interesting to me - there are 29 different products affected. How could that be? How could they be related? Well, those products come from 10 different egg brands who all have their eggs packed at 2 facilities. Talk about mega ag!
Now, I don't know this for sure, but I would bet that all of those millions of eggs come from one mega-farm that has a salmonella outbreak inside one of its mega buildings.
Keep in mind that a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) is defined as having a minimum of 82,000 laying hens. In other words, it's plausible for those millions of eggs to come from one "farm".
And the saddest part? All of those hens were likely culled to stop the outbreak quickly.
One last note here -- the egg recall example is actually a small one. It's even worse with beef. Did you know that 85% of all grain finished beef is processed by just 4 companies? Geez! And, I mean, we all saw the food chain break during COVID.
On the flip side (and gosh, I'm happy there's an alternative), a food web is a collection of small feed suppliers, farmers, processors, etc.
They are all independent, and each has an important role in getting your food to you.
When one intersection in the web breaks, it's fairly easy to repair it and find someone else to fill in. It's a resilient way to produce food. The downside to a food web is that the food does cost more.
Let's take our egg farmers as an example. They work in small "pods".
They all get their feed and cartons from the same place. They all follow the same farming practices. But, other than that, they work independently in "pods". Right now, we have 2 egg pods.
A "pod" consists of 1-5 family farmers with small flocks (no more than 3,000 birds each). And that group of farmers has their eggs packed at one small family egg packer.
If we need more eggs, then we need to start another pod. If one pod (or a part of a pod) goes down, another can likely fill in.
What do you think? Is it worth it to pay more for food from a resilient food web? Do we need the food chain to supply affordable food? What does our food future look like?
I'd love to hear from you. Comment below (no account required) or contact us 😊
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PS: Did I mention we have plenty pastured, honest yolk, corn & soy free eggs right now? There's no outbreak or shortage for us!
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