According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Egg-Grading Manual, “Checks [aka “cracks’”] are an unavoidable problem in the marketing of eggs because eggs cannot be assembled, graded, packed, transported, and merchandized without some breakage.” Unavoidable. That’s the standard, I guess. The manual does not cite a specific acceptance quality level (AQL) for cracks, but clearly it implies some number above zero. According to ISO 2859-10—“Sampling procedures for inspection by attributes,” AQL is the “quality level that is the worst tolerable.” Tolerable to whom?

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