Egg Sales

After some poking around on the interweb, I discovered that I have to label the eggs that I sell … even though I have a flock of less than 20 hens. There are a couple of pieces of legal instruments that cover the production of eggs for sale. The Tasmanian Food Act, the Egg Standard and the Animal Welfare legislation. From these three instruments I discovered that:

1. I do not need to be licensed as an egg producer or carry an egg producers license because I have less than 20 hens;
2. I am subject to the Food Act as a backyard poulterer irrespective of the number of hens I have because I am selling, gifting or otherwise providing a foodstuff; and
3. As a consequence of 2 … I have to follow the standards for labelling from the Egg Standards.

Well, it isn’t that much of a problem. It increases my costs by about $0.50 per dozen eggs to cover the cost of egg cartons, sticky labels and printing (I’m printing the labels myself). It just means that the $5.00 I charge for a dozen free range eggs means slightly less profit. My chickens lay, on average, 3-4 eggs per day which means I get about 9 dozen eggs per month. After feed costs and now carton and labelling costs … my profit has just gone down to $5 per month or the princely sum of $60 per annum! Woohoo … here comes my retirement fund! It’s a good thing that I do this for our own health and welfare rather than as a business.