Welsh trading standards bosses have warned that they will get tough with those who mislead the public by falsely labelling eggs.
The warning comes after two successful prosecutions by the Carmathenshire Trading Standards Service. Those two prosecutions followed on the heels of a high profile case in which an egg company boss was jailed for three years at Worcester Crown Court after being caught passing off cage eggs as free range or organic.
Carmathenshire trading standards officers have made it clear that they will prosecute anyone who is caught mislabelling eggs. "It has become big business for companies to mislabel eggs. Free range eggs can be sold for considerably more than battery eggs, boosting profits by misleading the customers as to what they are buying," said trading standards manager Roger Edmunds. He said, "Consumers have the right to expect that what they are buying is what is described on the packaging.
"We are determined to tackle this problem and have worked closely with the egg marketing inspectors to bring these two prosecutions. I would like to recognise the great assistance we received from egg marketing inspector Chris Poole in the recent Lampeter Eggs case."
Lampeter Eggs was prosecuted by Carmarthenshire Trading Standards Service for supplying English eggs labelled as Welsh. Lampeter pleaded guilty to three allegations of making misleading statements by describing eggs as coming from Wales when they did not. The company was prosecuted under the Food Safety Act.
Swansea Magistrates Court was told that the Cwmann-based company supplied a Spar distribution warehouse in Pontyclun. An egg marketing inspector discovered that eggs labelled as being from Wales were in fact from two English suppliers.
They had been mislabelled to fulfil a contract to supply Welsh eggs.
Lampeter Eggs was fined a total of £1,500 for the three offences and ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge and £1,354 costs.
In another recent prosecution brought by Carmarthenshire Trading Standards Service, a Llanelli woman was fined after she admitted selling cage eggs as free range.
Linda Cavill pleaded guilty at Llanelli Magistrates Court to two offences contrary to the Eggs and Chicks (Wales) Regulations 2009 and to a further offence contrary to Section 15 of the Food Safety Act 1990.
The court was told that Cavill’s company, G&L Cavill and Son, had supplied eggs to a shop in Dryslwyn. A Defra egg inspector called at the shop and tests showed that some eggs packaged as free range were, in fact, cage eggs. The ’best before’ dates on the eggs were also wrong.
Cavill, of Trimsaran Road, Llanelli, was fined £800 for each of the first two offences relating to the age of the eggs. She was fined £2,000 for the Food Safety Act offence, which related to the misdescription of the eggs. She was also ordered to pay full costs of £1,203.48.
The council’s executive board member for housing and public protection, Cllr Hugh Evans said, "It is important that people can feel confident that when they pay extra for free range eggs then that is what they are getting. The fines imposed show how seriously the court has taken this issue."
In March this year conman Keith Owen was jailed for his part in a £100 million fraud involving Heart of England Eggs near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. Owen dishonestly passed off millions of cage eggs as either free range or organic. Owen repackaged the eggs and sold them on to unsuspecting suppliers. The eggs ended up on the shelves of Sainsbury’s and Morrisons and Owen netted £3 million. His scam ran from June 2004 to May 2006 before he was caught by Defra inspectors. The fraud was discovered when Defra used untraviolet light to reveal wire imprints on the eggs. The examination was carried out following a tip off from suspicious lorry drivers.
The prosecutor at Worcester Crown Court told the judge, "The victims of Keith Owen’s false accounting were not only the direct customers of Heart of England, but also the public, as well as legitimate egg producers." She said that Owen had falsified records relating to real suppliers and also invented fictitious companies that were supposedly supplying Heart of England with eggs. She said he made up paperwork and computer entries to cover up what he was doing.
Keith Owen pleaded guilty to three charges of providing false information for accounting purposes when he appeared at Worcester Crown Court earlier this year. Judge Toby Hooper sentenced Owen to three years in prison, he made a £3 million confiscation order and imposed £250,000 costs. He was also banned from being a company director for seven years.
The judge told him, "Your false accounting brought personal shame on your normal business. Your greed and corruption has destroyed the legitimate business you had known all your life. By greed you have destroyed that business. Your business cheated the public when well intentioned people chose free range eggs because they believed in the standard of the eggs that they were being given."
Owen’s sentence was welcomed by BFREPA chairman John Retson. He said the majority of those in the egg industry were honest and hard working people and he said BFREPA would continue to help the authorities to weed out rogues.
The egg industry, itself, has made further moves to combat such fraud. Lion code subscribers voted to adopt on-farm stamping as part of the Lion code. Cage eggs produced under the code are already subject to the requirement that they be stamped on farm. The measure came into force on December 31. For other eggs, including free range, the requirement will come into force on December 31 this year.
The British Egg Industry Council says that as well as introducing on-farm stamping, it has also made other improvements to the Lion code to improve security. They include unannounced audits of all Lion packing stations and better traceability through a new database to track eggs throughout the system.
