Two more schools pick Pete & Gerry’s

Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter and Dartmouth College in Hanover are the latest schools to begin serving eggs produced under humane methods in Monroe, New Hampshire.

Beginning this month, Phillips Exeter Academy will serve organic eggs from Pete & Gerry’s Organic Egg Farm in Monroe. Dartmouth will begin using the farm’s “Nellie’s Nest” brand cage-free eggs.

The University of New Hampshire started serving Nellie’s Nest eggs earlier this year, as are Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, the University of Rochester in New York and American University in Washington, D.C.

“We’re very excited about the program,” said Jesse Laflamme, marketing director and son of owner Gerry Laflamme. “We’ve only been marketing toward schools for three or four months, and it’s really becoming a nice niche for us.”

He said the farm began looking at institutional customers after a campaign by the national office of the Humane Society, located outside of Washington, D.C., examined the extremely crowded conditions of egg-laying hens kept in conventional, or battery, cages.

“They have less than two-thirds a sheet of paper to move around in,” said Laflamme.

The Humane Society approached universities and colleges across the country to consider switching to cage-free eggs.

“While there are many suppliers of cage-free eggs in the country, we’re one of the main suppliers in the Northeast,” Laflamme. – CINDY KIBBE