Shoppers deceived in free-range egg scandal
Four of the major supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons) have been selling eggs marked as free-range when they actually came from a European factory farm.
A criminal inquiry is under way into how one firm alone might have been selling millions of eggs a year to High Street retailers who had no idea that they were part of a sophisticated scam. Shoppers are believed to have been duped into paying double the price for free-range to avoid eggs from birds housed in battery cages. Many imported factory-farm eggs contain salmonella.
Police inquiries are centred on a business in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, where it is alleged that millions of cheap eggs were imported from France and Italy and repackaged and labelled as free-range. They were bought by wholesalers at free-range prices. The farm had its own free-range chickens and also imported genuine free-range eggs.
Read More at the Times
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There has been a similar problem in Australia, largely because there has been no national definition of the term ‘free range’ We are conducting a consumer survey on our blog at http://freerangereggs.blogspot.com
to get consumer views about what they think free range eggs are.
Labelling requirements are being tightened, but our national government favours leaving the industry to self-regulate.