A Modern Scarlet Letter: Class, Guilt, and the Semiotics of Supermarket Eggs
Huw Nolan
The recent shift in Australia towards colour-coded egg cartons, where black cartons often denote cage eggs and brighter hues imply free-range or organic options, functions less as a transparent welfare initiative and more as a contemporary moral theatre. Though ostensibly signalling production methods, the practice operates within a broader semiotic economy that echoes puritanical systems of public shaming. In a period marked by rising food costs, especially in staple items like eggs, the timing of this aesthetic coding is suspect. It subtly guilts consumers into associating economic necessity with moral failure. The shift does not occur in a cultural vacuum but aligns with longstanding traditions of symbolic discipline, now mediated through consumer packaging rather than religious doctrine.
While public discourse frames these colour signals as educational or empowering, empirical studies suggest otherwise. Research consistently indicates that most Australians lack detailed knowledge of animal welfare and the distinctions between housing systems. As Peta Taylor and Huw Nolan have demonstrated, there is little public understanding of what 'cage-free' or 'free-range' genuinely entails. Furthermore, consumer motivations often skew toward health and taste perceptions rather than ethical concerns. However, when purchasing decisions are made in public settings like supermarkets, reputational anxiety and public perception play a significant role in which eggs end up at the checkout. People report discomfort and embarrassment when being seen selecting the cheaper, caged eggs. This is not based on ethical reflection, but fear of social judgement.
Roland Barthes’ analysis of mythmaking is crucial here. In Mythologies, he explains how signs acquire secondary meanings that mask ideology as nature. The egg carton is not merely packaging; it becomes a moral signal. The black carton connotes not nutritional pragmatism, but deficiency of character: selfishness, ignorance, poverty. The message is never “you are buying eggs” but “you are a bad person buying bad eggs.” These codes have long existed on egg cartons, smiling chickens, pastoral landscapes, and golden sunlight all designed to obscure the realities of production while manufacturing a sense of virtue. This aesthetic has always existed, but the explicit colour codification intensifies its disciplinary power and makes it a lot harder to hide by covering the label with a strategically placed bunch of herbs.
As one egg producer candidly told us, supermarkets prefer selling free-range eggs because their higher retail price yields greater profit margins, despite equivalent shelf space. The colour change, then, is not simply informative, it is a tool of classed moralisation under the guise of ethical consumerism.
The good news is that improving animal welfare is not about choosing one egg carton over another. Housing systems involve trade-offs, and no method is objectively ideal. Many Australians face financial, practical, and ethical limits in what they can do in the service of better animal treatment. Recognising these limits is not a moral failure, but a step toward more honest and inclusive animal advocacy. The semiotics of carton colour are a recent invention. If we, as a society, resist attaching shame or superiority to them, their symbolic power will fade. Change begins not with packaging, but with how we think, learn and talk about animals, each other, and the real conditions behind the labels.
Further Reading:
Barthes, Roland. 1970. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: The Noonday Press.
Hill, Kristine. 2021. "Happy Hens or Healthy Eggs – A Summative Content Analysis Of How Hens Are Represented In Supermarket Egg Boxes Narratives." TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies 7 (1): 70-94. https://doi.org/10.23984/fjhas.98684. https://trace.journal.fi/article/view/98684.
Nolan, Huw RJ, Lauren M Hemsworth, Jennifer A Power-Geary, and Peta S Taylor. 2022. "A cage is a cage, unless you educate. rhetoric negatively impacts support for a novel housing system for laying hens unless the public are educated." Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9: 797911.
