Trading standards warning on eggs
Carmarthenshire Trading Standards Service has warned that it will prosecute companies that mislead customers by falsely labelling their eggs.
The county council has carried out two successful prosecutions in recent months.
The Carmarthenshire prosecutions follow closely behind a huge prosecution in Worcestershire which saw an egg company boss jailed for three years for wrongly passing off millions of eggs as free range.
In the first of the Carmarthenshire cases, Llanelli business woman Linda Cavill was taken to court in March for selling battery eggs as free range.
She pleaded guilty at Llanelli Magistrates Court in March 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. An egg marketing inspector called at the shop and tests showed that some eggs packaged as free range were in fact caged hens’ eggs. The ‘best before’ dates on the eggs were also wrong.
Cavill, of Trimsaran Road, Llanelli, was fined a total of £2,800 and was also ordered to pay full costs of £1,203.48.
Last week a Carmarthenshire firm was prosecuted for supplying English eggs labelled as Welsh.
Lampeter Eggs pleaded guilty to three allegations of making misleading statements by describing eggs as coming from Wales when they did not, contrary to 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.
Trading Standards Manager Roger Edmunds said: “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.
“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.”
See earlier posts -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/carmarthenshire-egg-firm-fined.html
and
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/llanelli-womans-eggs-fine.html
The county council has carried out two successful prosecutions in recent months.
The Carmarthenshire prosecutions follow closely behind a huge prosecution in Worcestershire which saw an egg company boss jailed for three years for wrongly passing off millions of eggs as free range.
In the first of the Carmarthenshire cases, Llanelli business woman Linda Cavill was taken to court in March for selling battery eggs as free range.
She pleaded guilty at Llanelli Magistrates Court in March 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. An egg marketing inspector called at the shop and tests showed that some eggs packaged as free range were in fact caged hens’ eggs. The ‘best before’ dates on the eggs were also wrong.
Cavill, of Trimsaran Road, Llanelli, was fined a total of £2,800 and was also ordered to pay full costs of £1,203.48.
Last week a Carmarthenshire firm was prosecuted for supplying English eggs labelled as Welsh.
Lampeter Eggs pleaded guilty to three allegations of making misleading statements by describing eggs as coming from Wales when they did not, contrary to 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.
Trading Standards Manager Roger Edmunds said: “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.
“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.”
See earlier posts -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/carmarthenshire-egg-firm-fined.html
and
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/llanelli-womans-eggs-fine.html
Comments