Good News Bad News

Today’s mail bought more regulation and fees with it…this time to do with producing and selling eggs in NSW.

Luckily, we come under the limit so don’t need to apply for a license (though we and any other people selling less than 20 dozen eggs a week DO NEED to notify the Food Authority of their business details within two months, online notification is free, paper notification is $55 and you can obtain the form by calling 1300 650 124 ), but from now on, anyone selling 20 dozen or more eggs a week has to pay for a license from the NSW Food Authority…for doing exactly what they’ve been doing free of charge since forever.

Yes, if you want to sell 20 dozen eggs a week (let’s call that 48 chickens laying 5 days a week on a small family farm, you now need to pay an appliction fee of $50 plus an annual license fee of $390 per premises (if you have 1-5 employees). You also need to pay for the cost of an auditor/inspector, which is approximately $250 per hour from what I can understand, and you may need this auditor once or twice a year. For small producers…this is another huge blow to local food production and consumer pricing and takes all the profit from a small operation and gives the farmer no payment at all for his/her time caring for their chickens. After feed costs, breeding costs, bedding costs, paying for egg cartons and labels, the work involved and now these new fees of $690+, a small scale egg producer will probably throw their hands up…or have to put their prices way up!  When you can pick up $4 eggs from battery-farmed chickens where tens of thousands of chickens are crammed together and fed industrial feed…it’s hard for customers to understand that eggs from free range, well tended, content chickens on small farms will need to be practically double that just to cover costs.

I totally understand the need for food safety and handling, there is a real risk of salmonella from poorly handled and cracked eggs.  I certainly don’t want our own family or anyone elses contracting salmonella and people do need to be aware of the risks of raw eggs used in mayonaise, ailoi etc…but how will paying fees really help that situation, how will we know if the new charge REALLY & TRULY reduces the number of problems? Is there a transparent one, two, three, five year period where they will assess and report if food poisoning due to raw egg mishandling drop with the new fees?  How can they work out if the problem occured on the farm, or in the user’s kitchen where the cook exposed the egg to the wrong temperature, cross contaminated with a knife used to cut meat etc? 

Rather than regulation and remittances, I wonder if just a little bit of cheap education would work better. How hard (and expensive) is it to remind farmers about the need to keep chicken food sealed off from rodents and feeders clean, the need to ensure eggs are clean when sold and not cracked, and that any pesticides or veterinary medicines (who wants that in their eggs anyway!?!) are used according to the manufacturer’s directions? 

And with all these cooking shows on TV like Master Chef, surely a well placed comment from a chef would let a few million Australians know  how important it is to handle raw eggs carefully…and take responsibility for the way they prepare food. 

It’s regulations and charges like this that help ensure smaller operators are forced out, concentrating Australia’s food sources even more into the hands of the few.

According to this NSW Health Dept news release from 2009, of 1020 notifications of salmonella poisoning in the first 4 months of 2009, 170 of the cases were reported due to eggs (from 5 incidents if I read it right). I certainly don’t want to downplay the importance of the effect salmonella can have on at risk groups, it can have tragic consequences, but how is this new fee on small farmers set up to make a positive change?

Here’s a fact sheet on Salmonella if you’re interested. And another article on how 130 people were affected in Albury by a home-made aioli. As a few eggs can be served to hundreds as part of a mayonaise or aioli, you can see the multiplier effect of why this is an issue….but why now? And how will this new fee and system really make a difference? And what other ways might achieve the same end – quality food – for less expense all round?