Since its reintroduction in 1998, the Lion quality mark for eggs has successfully repaired the damage caused to eggs’ reputation by misguided assumptions about cholesterol content and the devastation of Edwina Currie’s infamous salmonella outburst in the late eighties.
But this scheme only applies to chicken eggs and the duck egg market, despite clear evidence of growing interest, is still hamstrung by consumer unfamiliarity and a lack of clarity regarding traceability and quality standards.
To combat this, Watercress Lane, the UK’s largest producer of duck eggs, has now launched its own quality mark, the ’Blue Duck’, to guarantee its eggs are produced to consistently high standards of freshness, food safety and animal welfare.
The ’Blue Duck’ logo ensures a top quality product produced to stringent welfare and hygiene standards. With duck eggs appearing on more menus and growing retail sales, Melandy Daniels, manager at Watercress Lane, believes that a recognisable guarantee of quality will build consumer trust in duck eggs.
"Eggs are one of the simplest and most nourishing food sources" she said "and duck eggs have more protein, minerals and vitamins than hen eggs as well as a proper egg flavour, but the received wisdom is that they are not as hygienic or reliable. We know that this isn’t true and have introduced the Blue Duck to give consumers that guarantee."
That "received wisdom" on duck eggs is based on 60 year old post war attitudes when duck eggs fell out of fashion after hen eggs came off rationing and large scale egg production methods took control of the whole market. Though the demand for duck eggs has plummeted since then, few people remember why they fell out of favour and the challenge for Watercress Lane is to reintroduce them to a market unencumbered by historical prejudice.
All eggs carrying the ’Blue Duck’ are hand candled, to check the quality, washed, dried, graded and shipped out the day after laying and, in order to preserve the integrity of the eggs’ shells and ensure they stay fresher for longer, ’Blue Duck’ eggs are unbleached as this strips the egg of the waxy coat that protects it from infection.
Though the ultimate aim is for the ’Blue Duck’ to become synonymous with quality and flavour, Watercress Lane believes it requires more than guaranteed hygiene and freshness to fulfil that ambition so have developed the ’Blue Duck’ as an holistic scheme that encompasses stringent animal welfare, feed control and environmental enrichment criteria.
All 28,000 ducks at Watercress Lane’s hatcheries are managed in accordance with the RSPCA’s ’Freedom Foods’ code of conduct - no mean feat when they are producing more than seven and a half million eggs each year. For cleanliness and dietary control, without which ducks will eat anything, the flocks are barn kept with plenty of natural daylight and open water pools for preening and paddling.
With eggs now being hailed as a new superfood, the ’Blue Duck’ initiative also comes at just the right time. Despite being low in calories, eggs are unsurpassed as a single food source of high quality protein and the essential micronutrients thought vital to good health, particularly for growth and development in infancy and early life.
Recent research has reported on their important role in weight management and dieting and, dispelling a popular misconception, all major heart and health advisory groups, including the Food Standards Agency and the British Heart Foundation, have now lifted their limits on egg consumption as health experts have confirmed that they have a negligible effect on blood cholesterol.
Duck eggs, being larger and more nutritionally dense than hen eggs, give greater health benefits, as well as a bigger flavour, with a single egg containing all eight essential amino acids to make up 15% of the recommended daily allowance of protein.
After the chocolate excesses of Easter, Watercress Lane is aiming to put duck eggs back in their rightful place on our menus where they can make a valuable contribution to healthy balanced diets and the ’Blue Duck’ scheme is just what is needed to guarantee a fresh, natural and delicious egg.
