AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Your thoughts on new regulations?

If you have a few chickens scratching in your back yard and occasionally sell a few eggs to your neighbour, or from a stall outside your farm, from 26 November 2013 (2014 in NSW and Victoria), unless your eggs are stamped you will be breaking the law.

This is due to a new national standard that requires eggs to be stamped under the guise of “traceability”, despite limited evidence showing this to be more effective than current packaging requirements.

In Tasmania the regulations will also require that you obtain a licence, lodge a Food Safety Plan (FSP) and pay to have that plan audited (the auditor costs $244 per hour, minimum two hours), regardless of how many birds you have.

Egg stamping is also expensive. Machines can start at $4,000 and the alternative – hand stamping each egg individually – is a prohibitive labour cost.

We believe that customers who buy directly from farmers hold them to the highest standards of animal welfare, food safety and biosecurity.

We also believe that imposing the cost of egg stamping and FSP audits on small farmers is unnecessarily penalising these small businesses and reducing their ability to grow into large ones. These new rules effectively restrict the ability of consumers to choose eggs produced by their local farmers.

I can see a bit on both sides of the coin

Yes it is bad for the true blue small egg famer and I do agree with you on that point
But the good is
I have bought eggs some one around here
before I had my chookies I used to buy from him and they tasted good then he lost his flock to foxes.

just after my old flock left I have bought another dozen from him since he has started aging and they tasteand look just like home brand eggs that have been sold for 5 dollars a dozen. so if my gut feeling is right the stamping will stop this practice

I am currently giving away about 10 dozen eggs per week and had thought that some farm gate sales might help with the feed bill if I bought some new cartons.
It looks like it won't be worth the hassles of complying with these rules. I would have to register with the state government, buy a stamp and stamp each egg. No fees yet but governments can't resist charging for this sort of thing.
Wonder whether this is just the "nanny state" burdening us with rules about every little facet of our lives or are commercial interests pushing to wipe out backyard chooks?
Where will it all end. It looks like the thin end of the wedge.

Yep ditto to that barnsey

Especially if it stops shonks buying eggs from the market & selling them on at twice the price. Which I honestly hope did not happen to you barnsey.

The friend who helped me with Clyde is an Ag teacher so they have chickens at the school and get eggs to bring home. Before I got chickens I got some of those eggs and because of the feed they get fed is really low in protein their egg yolks were really pale yellow, like cage egg & didn't taste very nice.....which is why I decided to get chooks of my own. This could be one possibility why the eggs you got aren't very nice. The other is of course that he is a shonk and doing what was suggested earlier.

Cheers
Chicka-Dee

Is he the bloke that you gave Lord Francis and his harem too?

Chicka-Dee I think your right in both points I have noticed the eggs are diffant sizes the big ones are for sure home brand eggs the smaller ones from his own chooks and they are not much better.

HH

No the fellow Lord Francis went to is closer then the other bloke
The egg seller I don't know well enough and I would have not thought him good enough for Lord Francis

Thanks Yas, glad your chook family went to a good home.

Yes, there are a few dodgy backyard and even market egg sellers out there. I remember buying free range, cornfed R.I.R eggs at Vic Market, the people went out to the truck and were opening boxes of caged eggs from a poultry farm and putting them on display. I contacted that poultry farm and they said they had no control of what happened to their eggs once they were sold.

Provided no one would dob you in, if you had established regular egg customers would you get into trouble?

A bit tired even of even local govts rules and regulations at the moment regarding poultry.

I have now been told that dodgy bloke will just prob take down the advert outside his place

He could get dobbed in when the law is in place but he has lost me as a customer, but will not dob him in as his son is a friend.

Yes I do think some one would get in trouble if caught when the law of egg stamping is in place

I myself used to give away eggs to friends last summer and will do aging maybe may or so.

Yet more red tape to just sell some yummy home eggs
Bloody stupid

Martin55