Letter to the editor
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
By Michael Brooks, Executive Director - Egg Producers
Some information in the article by Jon Rawlinson, “Free range eggs ‘good as gold’”, in the September 2011 issue of Urban Living was misleading, and in response, we ask that you share the below information with your readers.
The article reports a claim made by Gareth Manning of Sunset Free-Range Poultry that the SPCA’s Blue Tick accreditation scheme improves “transparency in the marketplace” by reducing the potential for farmers “mixing” eggs from cage and free-range production systems. The Egg Producers’ Federation of NZ, Inc. (EPF) represents all commercial egg farmers across free-range, barn and cage methods and rejects the claim as being completely incorrect and baseless. Every egg producer member of the EPF is subject to stringent annual auditing by MAF, in which an accurate account of the volume of eggs produced by each production system, in relation to the number of birds on each farm, is required for compliance with the farm’s MAF Risk Management Programme. The EPF condemns any practice such as “mixing” eggs, as do its egg producer members, who are completely committed to the credibility of their brands and the traceability of their products.
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