Egg Stamps
I have been living in Denmark for quite some time now, and visiting other countries in Europe as well as other part of the world. One thing I found, when I visit grocery stores in EU countries, all eggs have a code printed on the shell. I started to question, why and what for?
According to EU law:
- all packaging must also be labelled to show how the eggs were produced.
- all eggs produced in the European Union (EU) must be stamped with a code to show where they came from
The code starts with one digit number, two characters and follows by digits. Often there is logo or other information next to it, as shown in the image above.
“0DK73323” What does it mean?
The first digit indicates the farming method, i.e. 0 = organic, 1 = free-range, 2 = barn and 3 = cage.
Two characters indicates the country of origin (ISO standard), in this case Denmark.
The rest digits is the producer ID.
For your health benefit it’s better to buy organic products. So next time make sure that you look for the egg code starting with zero. It’s the best!