A Guide for Buying Eggs in Netherlands

I went to Maikel's place for dinner last evening. I first called him from the office, and he told me all the details on how to get to his place by bike so that I would not get lost on the way. Thanks a lot Google Maps! Amsterdam map was open in both of our browsers; and it was very convenient then to follow his directions on phone.

How to get there
I rode through Oosterstraat, going straight ahead; passed through Nobelweg till I hit Kruislaan. Then, I took a fietspad (cycle path) by keeping the highway always on my right. After a while, I saw Diemen Zuid station and passed under the rail tracks. I had already taken notes of all details; so It was not that difficult to get to Clara Zetkinstraat and finally to Kruitberg through Kraaiennestpad. Kraaiennest means crow nest by the way, and the metro station nearby is also called so.

Dinner
He is really a good cook! He cooked a very delicious vegetarian pizza,and a dessert whose recipe I will ask (mix of yoghurt, lime, milk ).

Chickens without beaks !!
He had a box of eggs on his kitchen bench. He gave me the details of the lables on the inner side of the box cover:


Here, there are a group of numbers on the eggs we buy. Each number starts with either of 0, 1, 2, 3. The first column of the explanations in the picture points to the meaning of these numbers; and this column is the most important part to pay attention when buying eggs.

Maikel said that he always buys the ones labeled with zero (organic/ biologisch) or 1 (chicken freely allowed to eat outside in grasses/ vrije uitleop). I asked if 3-kooi meant cow. "No" he said, "it is cage. The eggs labeled with 3 are from chicken always kept in cages."

"I never buy eggs with labels of 2 or 3 since the beaks of those chickens are cut off" he said. I was in a big surprise! "Since they are kept together, otherwise they make harms to each other with their beaks when they have fights" he explained.

How awful! Never heard this before. Now I regret that I did not pay attention to those labels before. My campaign is: never 2- or 3- labels to discourage harms to chicken beaks!