Here's a podcast episode I recorded with a friend explaining how grocery stores work, along with some discussion about cage-free eggs in the US, including label regulations and prices. (Here's the Apple podcasts link.)

The podcast is structured as me teaching my bestie what I've learned about these topics. 

Here's the intro, which provides an overview of the episode:

As I’ve learned bits and pieces about groceries and cage-free eggs, I’ve gotten more and more confused and intrigued. 

For one, a lot of times, groceries are framed as greedy bastards that just take take take. I’ve been around many a conversation about the rising costs of groceries that insinuate that Walmart might as well have a tube from your bank account to its CEO or whatever. But then, I’d also heard that groceries have some of the slimmest margins of different kind of retailers. And sometimes when I would mention this to people, they didn’t seem to believe it. 

Another thing I’d never really questioned after learning about cage-free eggs from an animal advocacy perspective was whether the labels on cage-free eggs were accurate; as in, is anyone in the US marketing eggs that came from caged hens as cage-free? In animal advocacy conversations about getting hens out of cages, cage-free labels are implicitly thought of as accurate. Is there a specific labeling regulation in the US that ensures these labels are accurate? Or maybe explaining why cage-free labels are likely accurate is more like trying to explain why you think the Earth is round; there’s so many little things that are all connected to your understanding of the phenomenon that it’s hard to disentangle and name each reason. 

The pricing of cage-free eggs is also really interesting to me. I feel like people have these stories about why things are priced how they are that are just way too simple to get the full picture.

I’m also very curious about how the relationship between groceries and suppliers. It’s commonly pointed out that bigger and bigger groceries have more and more purchasing power and can get lower prices from suppliers. This kinda makes it sound like Walmart would say “Make it cheaper. Do you want us to sell your product or not?”. But what about for brands that have irreplaceable products, like Coke? That seems like a hollow threat. 

And then, I also just wanna know: how does food get to the grocery? 

I'm not an expert about any of the stuff we cover, and I would guess that some of the things I say are mistaken or misleading. Please correct me if you can. Here's some of the sources about specific claims.  I hope you enjoy, and I hope the audio is okay!