Egg deception: How to tell you're buying free range

Free-range eggs you can trust: click here for the Green Ideas list of brands you can buy in confidence

The Commerce Commission is concerned the actions of a Northland chicken farmer, who sold cage eggs as free range, will damage consumer confidence in legitimate free-range egg products.                         

Forest Hill Farms owner John Garnett was sentenced at the Whangarei District Court yesterday to 12 months home detention and 200 hours community service for packaging and selling over 200,000 dozen cage eggs as barn laid or free range.

In a media release Commerce Commission consumer manager Stuart Wallace says Mr Garnett’s deception will potentially negatively affect the reputation of legitimate free-range egg producers if consumers lose confidence in the product.

“Consumers who purchased these eggs were subject to a serious breach of trust by the trader. It’s likely that consumers who purchase free range eggs do so as a matter of principle, as they are significantly more expensive than cage eggs.  We think consumers are entitled to trust what traders tell them, particularly where the consumer has no way of independently verifying the claims being mad,” Mr Wallace says.

Mr Garnett pleaded guilty in June this year to 20 charges brought by the Commission relating to deliberately mislabelling the caged eggs.

The eggs were on sale between April 2010 and November 2011 through various retailers, including several large supermarkets in Northland and Auckland.                                                                         

The commission estimates Forest Hill Farms made an additional $376,000 from the sale of the falsely labelled eggs, with a retail value in excess of $1 million.

Around 14 per cent of laying hens in New Zealand are classed as free range but even then, with no minimum standards for the living environment outside the cage, the birds’ level of welfare is not guaranteed (Green Ideas, Aug-Sep 2013). 

Trustworthy free-range brands will likely have certification from a third party auditor, so look for the SPCA blue tick, AsureQual and BioGro labels to buy with confidence. 

The company behind Forest Hill Farms, W.E Garnett Limited filed insolvency documents in November 2012.