Live the egg-free way

Dear Editor:

The real rotten egg in the 500 million egg recall appears to be the owner and feed supplier for Iowa’s giant Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, with a long record of violations.

Austin “Jack” DeCoster has paid millions of dollars in fines and restitution for violations of food safety, worker safety, immigration, sexual harassment, animal cruelty and water pollution laws in Maine, Maryland, New York and Iowa. Iowa’s attorney general labeled DeCoster a “habitual violator.”

It’s been reported that more than 1,500 people have sickened by the DeCoster eggs, but the Centers for Disease Control estimates that the actual number may be as high as 45,000. The DeCoster lawyer’s admissions that “Contamination is common in poultry operations” and “the notion that eggs will ever be free of salmonella is ludicrous” convinced me that this is indeed an industry-wide problem, and that eggs are not safe to eat.

It’s easier and safer, too, to go egg-free. I found http://www.vegcooking.com/vegcooking-eggreplace.asp very helpful in making my transition to an egg-free diet.

Andrew Torelli

Aspen