Food (Labelling of Free-range Eggs) Amendment Bill
25/09/2013
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (18:13): I speak today in favour of the second reading of the Hon. Ms Franks’ Food (Labelling of Free-range Eggs) Amendment Bill 2012. I would like to thank Ms Franks and our colleague in the other place, Michael Pengilly, for the original briefing on this bill, including the Kangaroo Island free-range egg farmers who presented to MPs and staff last year.
I also appreciate the time that Days Eggs at Two Wells took to brief my office staff on their concerns with this bill and the negative impact they feel it will have on their business as an egg producer that operates in a national market. I also thank them for the tour they gave my staff of the various egg operations out at their Two Wells property. Despite this, I remain convinced that for the welfare of the chickens that produce free-range eggs and for the sake of clarity for consumers, as Mr Darley very eloquently mentioned, we need to make this change to food labelling laws in this state.
I would note that Days Eggs feels that these labelling laws do unfairly disadvantage those producing free range eggs that are not on Kangaroo Island, given there are fewer predators such as foxes present on Kangaroo Island, creating an easy environment to protect chickens. The point I would make, however, is that this is perhaps precisely why we should support food production in environments that are most conducive to that food, crop or product.
In the past 24 hours, my office has received some 500 emails from constituents urging me to support this bill for both animal welfare and consumer reasons. In the same period, I have not received any emails or correspondence asking me to vote against this bill. I have a couple of questions, however, particularly since it has been some time since this bill was first put to the chamber and there has been significant community debate about the issue since.
First, how will this bill interact with national food labelling standards and marketing, given that we operate in a national food market? We buy eggs from interstate and we sell eggs interstate: how will eggs that are sold here from interstate be labelled? Could this in any way disadvantage local South Australian free-range egg producers?
Secondly, given the market demand for eggs is now so large in Australia, what is the expected cost of the passing of these laws in South Australia? Will the cost point for free-range eggs increase if producers such as Days Eggs choose not to produce eggs at 1,500 chickens per hectare? That is all I have for now. I look forward to the answers to those questions and continuing the debate on this important issue.
