# The Color of Eggs **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 12, 2005, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198 "2005-07-12T16:13:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SeattleSue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SeattleSue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeattleSue)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198/1 "2005-07-12T16:13:59Z")
Yes, Virginia, brown eggs are more expensive; they aren’t nutritionally superior; and the taste difference is negligible. But there IS one extremely good reason to buy them anyway: supporting biodiversity. All white eggs are laid by a single breed, the Leghorn. More than 90% of all chickens in this country, laying and eating, are Leghorn chickens. If we were facing smart terrorists, they wouldn’t have bothered blowing up a few thousand people in a building by crashing an airplane into it. They would have developed a highly contagious virus with a high fatality rate for Leghorn chickens. Presto! The American food supply in chaos. It wouldn’t take terrorists, either. Anytime there is a high concentration of a single variety of organism, conditions are ripe for epidemic. The Irish potato famine occurred because the Irish were forced to depend on a single crop, and a single variety of that crop, for the bulk of their calories. Because of those conditions, the potato blight meant thousands of starving Irish, rather than “oh well, I guess we’ll eat more barley this year.” It happened in the U.S., too, in the 1970s: the corn blight. Anyone remember that? Wanna see a repeat with chickens? No? Buy brown eggs! ---
**Author:** ![Waterman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b2d939/32.png) [@Waterman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waterman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198/2 "2005-07-12T16:21:23Z")
Why just brown, what about blue-green and biege chicken eggs! ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198/3 "2005-07-12T22:43:18Z")
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, **Seattle Sue** , we’re glad to have you with us. When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the Staff Report under discussion. This saves searching time, and helps keep us all on the same page. In this case, I presume, it’s [Straight Dope Staff Report: What’s the difference between white eggs and brown eggs?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbrowneggs.html) No biggie, you’ll know for next time… and, as I say, welcome! ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198/4 "2005-07-13T12:05:33Z")
Just how easy would it be for terrorists to create a virus that would target one particular variety of one particular species of bird? If that could be done, why haven’t we done this to mosquitoes? ---
**Author:** ![citybadger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@citybadger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/citybadger)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-color-of-eggs/312198/5 "2005-07-13T14:44:04Z")
It would be far easier to spread a virus that simply kills chickens, or birds in general, than a particular breed. That said, its good to have genetic diversity in a population for resistance to natural disease. It is indeed true that brown eggs come from a variety of breeds and white eggs mostly one?