The keyboard warriors were having a heated dispute on Facebook over the price of eggs.
Some claimed they were paying $4 for a dozen eggs. Others said they were paying a lot less, and didn’t believe eggs cost that much anywhere in the country. Naturally, the subject of politics was brought into the conversation, blaming egg inflation on one political party or the other.
But no one was actually saying why the price was high.
I thought I knew why: a bad outbreak of the avian flu, which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 19 million chickens this season. Avian flu, also called bird flu, is highly contagious, and when one chicken in a coop gets it all the others have to be killed to stop its spread to other farms.
So I thought I would call the good folks at the American Egg Board — they’re the ones who came up with the “incredible, edible egg” slogan — to ask why egg prices have risen.
But something is scrambled at the American Egg Board. It turns out that they are a tough shell to crack.
I called the phone number listed on their website (incredibleegg.org) and let the phone ring. And ring. And ring. It was an odd ring, too, quite unlike any I had ever heard before. Eventually, the phone was answered by a fuzzy voice on a machine stating her name, like a home answering machine and not even mentioning if she were at the American Egg Board. The random voice halfheartedly suggested that I leave a message.
I declined. Instead, I sent an email on the form provided on the Contact Us page of the incredible, edible website.
I haven’t heard back in a timely manner or even, at this point, an untimely one. Perhaps all their best workers were poached, possibly by the National Bacon Council (slogan: “Bacon … It’s what’s for breakfast!”).
All the time spent waiting gave me plenty of opportunities to peruse their website, which is fascinating both for what it includes and for what it does not.
For instance, there is this tidbit: The American Egg Board was literally created by an act of Congress, the Egg Research and Promotion Order of 1976. Even so, it exists as a marketing organization to benefit U.S. egg farmers and is not funded by the government.
The site also has relatively recent news releases, such as one from August with the headline “New Study Finds a Relationship Between Eating Eggs and a Reduced Risk of Alzheimer’s Dementia.”
On a lighter side — over easy, you might say — the site also includes egg recipes. Some are very basic, but helpful for beginning cooks, such as fried eggs (turn down the heat as soon as you slide the eggs into the hot fat) and hard-boiled eggs (put the eggs in cold water, bring to a boil, remove from heat and cover for 12 minutes before cooling in ice water).
But some of the recipes are more complex. You can learn how to make a soufflé, or pasta carbonara, a Hawaiian scrambled egg pizza or whole wheat chocolate chip pancake poppers. Or if you go to the page for college and universities, you can click on a recipe for huevos chimichangas.
If you click on it, it takes you to that exact same page offering a recipe for huevos chimichangas. Which, when you click on it, takes you to the same page again. Just as when you click on the link for global recipes (“Discover egg recipes from different cultures and countries around the world”), it takes you to the same page with the same link, ad infinitum.
Or if you click on the link for “Made with REAL eggs” you get a notice that the page is not found. The same is true if, on the Egg Enthusiast Community page, you click on the recipe for mini Mediterranean frittatas.
What’s going on at the act-of-Congress-created American Egg Board? Beats me.
But something there is definitely cracked.
