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When you look at the rows and rows of USDA-graded egg cartons at the grocery store, the first thing you’ll notice is there’s a lot of stuff on them. It’s tempting to call it “information,” but you can’t—a lot of it is meaningless marketing copy.The most important information on a carton of eggs from a store is in code. Two codes, really. There’s the pack date and the plant code. These two numbers tell you when your eggs were washed, graded, and packed into their carton, and thus how fresh they really are, and where they were packed.The pack date is a Julian date, a three-digit number ranging from 001 to 365 that refers to a specific day of the year (in leap years, the numbers range from 001 to 366). For example, 001 is January 1, 032 is February 1, and 365 is December 31. The plant code is a four-digit number, often with a “P-” in front of it, that identifies the USDA-inspected plant where the eggs were washed, graded, and packed. The USDA has an <a href="https://data.ams.usda.gov/spotfire/wp/analysis?file=/AMS_Anonymous/PlantBook&waid=oRtyuBmBnEuOAS8XTIFwY-151802c9e5RffE&wavid=0">online tool</a> in which you can plug in the code and find out where exactly your eggs were packed.Our handy egg carton decoding tool gives you that information, along with the date your eggs were packed in, with a simple click. No need to do any math of any kind to figure out the date (what day is 254?); no need to remember that long USDA web address. Just plug your numbers in here. (Skip the &quot;P&quot; in the pack code, and if it includes any letter, make sure to capitalize them!)