Angel Acres Eggs Tested Drug Free

If you go out of your way to avoid pharmaceutical drugs in your own life… have you ever thought about whether pharmaceutical drugs were used to raise the animals producing the food you eat?

Unfortunately, pharmaceutical drug use is common across modern livestock production. Antibiotics, antiparasitics, medicated feeds, hormones, vaccines, and other pharmaceutical interventions are used throughout animal agriculture.

And just like with PUFAs and pesticides, what animals are exposed to can show up in the food they produce.

Veterinary drug residues and their metabolites have been detected in meat, milk, eggs, honey, and other animal foods.

Some researchers are investigating the human health concerns  associated with veterinary drug residues in our food, including allergic reactions, toxicity, disruption of the gut microbiome, and the development of antibiotic resistance.

Which brings me to some results I've been VERY excited to share.

We Tested Our Eggs for Drug Residues

We recently sent our Angel Acres eggs to an independent lab for testing across a broad panel of veterinary drug residues.

The results came back with NO detectable drug residues across the panel we tested.

I was pretty excited to see that. 😄

Not because I expected anything different since our ladies don't do drugs or get vaccines!

But because these results give us another way to verify the production system we've worked so hard to build.

And I think these results open the door to a much bigger conversation about something most of us probably don't think about when buying animal foods like beef, chicken, pork, dairy and eggs...

How dependent has modern livestock production become on pharmaceutical drugs?

“But Aren't Drug Residues Regulated?”

Yes.

But regulated doesn't mean residue-free.

Residue monitoring programs sample only a portion of the food supply, testing doesn't necessarily screen every food for every possible veterinary drug, and monitoring is largely designed to identify violations of established legal limits.

And those limits aren't necessarily zero.

The acceptable residue levels also vary around the world. For a number of veterinary drugs, U.S. residue limits differ from and are more lenient than standards used by other countries. (Just like pesticides, classic America!)

There is another limitation worth talking about.

Residue limits are generally established one drug at a time, in one food at a time.

But that's not how exposure happens in real life. Throughout the day, someone might eat eggs, beef, dairy, pork, chicken, honey, and seafood, potentially encountering small amounts of different residues from different sources.

And small doses can add up with cumulative exposure over time.

Yet there is no routine U.S. monitoring system that measures a person's total combined veterinary-drug residue exposure across their entire diet.

So yes, veterinary drug residues are regulated.

But regulated doesn't mean residue-free.

Drug Residues Have Been Detected in Eggs

This isn't purely hypothetical.

In one U.S. study, researchers purchased beef, eggs, and honey marketed as “antibiotic-free” from farmers markets and tested the products for common antibiotic residues.

In the eggs, researchers detected tetracycline antibiotics in every sample tested and sulfonamide antibiotics in 11 of 18 samples.

The concentrations were below the government "regulatory limits".

But again... below the regulatory limit isn't the same thing as no detectable residue.  

And that's part of why I was so excited about our results!

We're not simply relying on a claim about how our hens are raised.

We're testing the finished food that ends up on your plate.

The Bigger Story Here

Our test results are certainly exciting. But to me, the more important question is why the livestock raised in the Nourish Food Club network don't need these routine pharmaceutical interventions in the first place.

Pharmaceutical drugs have become deeply embedded in the design of modern livestock production, a system increasingly built to maximize production, increase efficiency, and produce food as cheaply as possible.

To accomplish that at enormous scale, many animals have been moved further and further away from the environments they naturally evolved to live in.

Animals are often crowded into confinement buildings at factory farms, experience higher stress levels, separated from the earth and sunlight, and given less opportunity to move, graze, forage, root, and express their natural behaviors.

Those conditions can suppress the immune system, and create greater disease and parasite-management challenges that then require additional interventions.

Such as...

Antibiotics.

Antiparasitics.

Medicated feeds.

Hormones.

Vaccines.

And I want to make an important distinction here.

There's a big difference between using medicine to treat a sick animal when it's truly needed…

…and designing a production system that routinely depends on pharmaceutical intervention to sustain production.

We wanted to build something different.

Management First

For generations, farmers raised livestock without today's pharmaceutical-intensive production model.

So let's go back to that.

We believe the foundation of animal health starts with reconnecting animals with nature and supporting their biology with the right tools:

Sunlight.

Fresh air.

Pasture.

Lower stocking densities.

Rotational systems and regenerative practices.

Healthy soil.

Thoughtful nutrition.

Space to move and express natural behaviors.

And farmers who actually know and observe their animals.

That's why one of the main principles we train our new small regenerative farmers on is:

Management first.

Meaning, we focus on creating conditions that support animal health from the beginning, rather than relying on pharmaceutical interventions to manage problems created by the production system.

We want to create conditions where healthy animals can thrive.

And that's what allows us to be proudly #NeedleFree.

No vaccines, antibiotics, hormones or pharmaceutical drugs.

And now we have test results that help verify that standard.

Farming, Not Pharm-ing

Our goal isn't simply to produce food that stays below what's legally allowed.

We're trying to build a fundamentally different food system.

One rooted in regenerative agriculture, reconnecting animals with nature, and putting good livestock management first.

The way farmers did it for generations.

We call it:

Farming, not pharm-ing.

And these test results are one more piece of evidence that the system we're building is reflected in the food we're producing.

Interested in learning more about drug residue in our foods?

If you'd like to understand how veterinary drugs became so embedded in modern livestock production, how residues can make their way into the food supply, and the potential human-health and environmental concerns, I've put together a three-part educational series that dives much deeper into the topic of veterinary drug use and residues in our food.

[Read the three-part Drug Residue series here.]