WA egg producer guilty of misleading 'free range' claims

The Federal Court has found that one of Western Australia’s largest egg producers made false or misleading representations that its eggs were ‘free range’.

Eggs produced by Snowdale Holdings were supplied to retailers under the brands Eggs by Ellah, Swan Valley Free Range and Wanneroo Free Range.

The court found that Snowdale represented that the eggs were laid by hens which were able to, and did, go outdoors and roam freely on an open range on most days. However, the court found that between April 2011 and December 2013, most of the hens from the Snowdale sheds did not move around on an open range because the farming conditions significantly inhibited them from doing so. These conditions included the number of pop holes, the number of birds per metre of pop hole, flock size inside the shed and shed size.

In his judgment, Justice Siopis noted, “There is no suggestion in the images and get-up used on any of the Snowdale egg carton labels that the laying hens are, in fact, housed in steel industrial style sheds about 100 m long and that the hens in those sheds would have to compete with another 12,000 or 17,000 other hens, as the case may be, before the hens could even exit the shed to enter an open range.”

“Consumers expect that when they purchase eggs promoted as ‘free range’, they are getting eggs from hens that actually go outside,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.

A date for a hearing on relief is yet to be determined. The ACCC is seeking declarations, injunctions, pecuniary penalties, implementation of a compliance program, corrective notices and costs.

In April 2016, the Federal Court imposed a penalty of $300,000 on Derodi and Holland Farms for false or misleading free-range egg claims.