Saturday, June 16, 2018

More Government red tape for egg farmers

The Federal Government is at it again with ludicrous legislation which does nothing to help consumers and imposes on small businesses.New country of origin food labelling requirements will become mandatory on 1 July 2018. Under the new system the Federal Government flagged in 2016, it is mandatory for most food grown, produced or made in Australia to carry a familiar kangaroo symbol and a bar chart with accompanying text that shows the proportion of Australian ingredients. It will add to the already overcrowded labels on cartons of eggs, with meaningless requirements imposed by politicians.The stupidity includes: We are the only fresh food producers forced to print nutrition panels on cartons even though the concept of the panels was to allow consumers to differentiate between the food values of similar products - such as various breakfast cereals, confectionery or drinks.Meat fish and vegetable producers don't have the burden oflabelling on their products - even though they clearly have differing nutritional values. All egg producers print the same nutrition panels on cartons so consumers are provided with no meaningful nutritional information on which to base purchase decisions. Anyway most of the panels use such fine print that they are illegible.Our labels already carry the words 'Product of Australia.' We are a small farming business and our labels are just black and white so why do the mongrels want us to print in colour? It's another example of kicking legitimate businesses who meet expected standards. Unregistered egg producers, operating in the cash economy meet no requirements as they are exempt from food safety and all other standards.Politicians are doing everything they can to drive small family farmers out of business. They are only interested in corporate giants who sell eggs in supermarkets. Our response to the polticians is to say 'enough is enough'. If the Government demands that we print new labels - they can bloody well pay the printer! Time for a revolution.

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