Editorial: Control needed on eggs

Photo / Mike Barrington

The unique stink that emanated from Forest Hill Farm in Waikaraka wasn't just chook poo.

Something rotten permeated beyond the egg farm into the homes of 200,000 consumers who bought eggs from Forest Hill that were wrongly labelled free range. Feathered fraud.

Consumers are happy to shell out extra dollars for eggs that roll from the blissfully happy bottom of a roaming chicken, and they did. Except that millions of Forest Hill Farm's eggs weren't free range - they were produced by what many consider to be cruelly held prisoners.

Whether a caged bird is not as happy as a free range chicken is a subjective and contentious matter. But there is no doubt that consumers were ripped off by John Garnett.

The former director of Forest Hill Farm in Waikaraka admitted to the Commerce Commission that his company scrambled the packaging of about 206,000 dozen - 2.4 million - caged eggs.

Garnett may have egg on his face but the yolks on us because apparently, Garnett says this sort of thing is common within the industry. I believe him. There are no regulations that control what is or isn't a free range or barn egg - we are reliant on the honesty of what are sometimes rotten egg farmers.

Ironically, Garnett has ended up with home detention - a sentence akin to being a human chicken in a cage.

He won't be ranging free for some time. Several questions remain, how many overpriced eggs are Northlanders continuing to crack, and why should we trust any retail outlet big or small purporting to sell "free range" eggs?

Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson made a career out of lampooning, among other things, chickens. One of his many books is entitled The Chickens Are Restless.

Whangarei's recent "eggsperience" is a Larson cartoon just waiting to happen. And not just the chickens are restless. So too, are the humans. When it comes to eggs, this is no poultry matter, we're all chook up, who can we trust?