Why Social Media Users Are Accusing This Egg Brand of Scamming Its Customers

From a lawsuit to viral TikTok videos, this brand has been in some hot water.

Social media has been rife with allegations of a massive egg scandal recently, and as a person who eats eggs nearly every day, the claims immediately caught my attention.

Over the past few weeks several users have taken to Instagram and TikTok to call out popular egg producer Vital Farms for reportedly inhumane practices. Videos summarizing the issue say that Vital Farms engages in farming methods that include debeaking chickens, keeping the birds primarily indoors, and killing all male chicks. Content creators making these arguments primarily cite a 2021 lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ( PETA ) as evidence of the abuse.

Vital Farms denies claims of unethical practices, and regularly posts content emphasizing the green pastures that its chickens roam — the company has even directly responded to accounts on social media to refute the criticism.

Related: 4 Ways to Tell if Your Eggs Have Gone Bad

The reality isn’t as straightforward as TikTok might make it seem, and there is some misinformation being perpetuated online. But once you sift through the muddled pool of facts and accusations surrounding Vital Farms, it’s clear that there’s a lot consumers don’t know about the eggs they’re buying.

What's going on and what is the lawsuit about?

In 2021 a consumer lawsuit was filed against Vital Farms, alleging that the company misled customers to believe its hens were treated more ethically than they actually are. Social media users indicate that PETA is responsible for the suit, but Asher Smith , the director of litigation for the nonprofit, clarified for Food & Wine that “PETA Foundation lawyers assisted plaintiffs and their lawyers in filing a lawsuit and briefing a motion to dismiss.”

PETA has not been involved in the suit since 2023, and the class action claims against Vital Farms were dismissed last month .

Related: A User’s Guide to Every Egg Carton Label, From Grades to ‘Pasture-Raised’

Here’s where it gets a bit complicated: Some content creators point to a 2023 settlement in which the egg brand agreed to pay PETA $292,000 as proof of Vital Farms’ guilt, but this is an inaccurate interpretation. The settlement actually ended a separate suit, which PETA filed in response to Vital Farms subpoenaing the nonprofit for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary documents in relation to the initial suit from 2021.

All of this legal back-and-forth — which appears to have ended — doesn’t answer the question, is Vital Farms treating its chickens humanely?

What does Vital Farms have to say about the allegations?

The egg purveyor, which went public in the summer of 2020 with an opening stock price of $22, strongly denies any assertions of unsavory agricultural practices and told Food & Wine via email that “​​Vital Farms is dedicated to bringing ethically produced food to households across the U.S. All our pasture-raised eggs are laid by hens that are free to roam on healthy pasture, with access to at least 108 square feet each, and plenty of fresh air and sunshine. We believe our practices and those of our farmers are ethical and humane, which is why we chose to fight the lawsuit in the first place.”

The Vital Farms’ website does a really good job of convincing you that its eggs are ethically produced. The tongue-in-cheek, internet-savvy language says the brand is “bullshit free,” and a wordy FAQ contains colorful language that often distracts from exactly what its answers are.

Eggs from Vital Farms are labeled pasture-raised and certified humane. The term “pasture-raised” is not regulated in the United States, but “certified humane” is — the latter means that hens have “access to at least 108 square feet each” as Vital Farms noted, and there are other qualifications that must be met like quality of diet and sanitary living spaces.

What consumers need to know about egg labels

One of the keywords in Vital Farms' response is “access.” Certified humane, pasture-raised hens simply need to have a green space that is available to them, but it doesn’t mean that they spend the bulk of their time on it or that they can easily use it.

Smith elaborated on this, explaining that “free range claims by [anyone who sells eggs] in the United States who operates at national scale, even if they have a certified humane logo or or similar third party certification, are almost certain to be deceptive to a lot of reasonable consumers. And one of the reasons for that is that when you pack tens of thousands of hens into a shed with probably little more than a square foot of space each, many of those hens are never actually going to fight through and reach the outdoor space no matter how much outdoor space there is.”

Related: 33 Egg Recipes for Breakfast and Beyond

So while a large pasture is required for these hens, a large amount of indoor space is not, and they might be so packed together indoors that they can’t reach the outdoor area. There is also not a mandated amount of time that the chickens are required to be outdoors.

Smith did not clarify if there is any direct evidence that Vital Farms’ chickens have difficulty reaching their pastures, but he did emphasize that consumers should assume most major egg brands with humane-label language — like Nellie’s Free Range Eggs — are guilty of this.

Because Vital Farms sources its eggs from many different farms, it’s important to know that some of them could ensure that chickens spend all of their time outdoors, while others don’t — there’s no guarantee either way, and you can’t know exactly which farm your eggs come from.

Deciphering what a certified humane designation actually does and does not require is key to knowing which dishonorable farming methods a brand might engage with.

This designation does prohibit debeaking, a practice that many TikTokers have accused Vital Farms of. So while the company notes that they dull the tips of chickens’ beaks (to prevent them from harming each other through pecking), they do not remove the beaks of young hens.

One common allegation against the egg brand is that once hens become less productive later in life — aka stop laying eggs — they’re killed. In a very roundabout response on its FAQ page, Vital Farms confirms that these chickens are either euthanized or sold to pet food companies. They do not specify if there is a minimum age that a hen must reach before it can be euthanized.

Finally, social media users have also accused Vital Farms of participating in chick culling, or the killing of any male chicks because they won’t produce eggs. Smith expounded on how violent this practice is, saying that “practically anyone else who you'd see on the grocery shelf advertising their eggs as humane or ethical or free-range or pasture-raised, and charging a premium for that marketing…., condones the mass killing of male chicks in macerators, which are machines that operate a lot like meat grinders.”

Vital Farms’ website states that it does not “own or operate a hatchery of [its] own or control the means of culling that the hatcheries use,” and later mentions that “the practice of male chick culling is a reality of today’s food system that has been difficult to solve.” While the company may not hatch chicks itself, it seems likely that hatcheries providing its hens do participate in chick culling.

It’s evident that the marketing language surrounding how our eggs are sourced is intended to mislead consumers and hide aspects of production that are unsavory. But does this mean every allegation of unethical behavior is true? Not necessarily.

The best way to make sure your eggs are coming from an ethical brand is to learn what the labels actually mean, purchase them from a farmers market where you can ask the purveyors questions, or as Smith suggested to me, go vegan.

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