Despite the pictures of happy hens roaming lush green paddocks that now grace many egg cartons, Australia's free range industry is not a happy place. Many of Australia's major producers run properties with mixed systems: hens laying in cages, as well as in barns, and free-range set-ups, however eggs produced in either system can end up labelled "free range". In fact, with the current high demand for free-range, and the over-production of eggs from barns and cages, thousands of eggs produced on purely caged hen farms are being falsely labelled 'free range' and sold for premium prices.

Ivy Inwood is widely regarded as the Queen of Australia's free-range industry, respected even by those who disagree with her. With her husband Roy, she runs Country Range Farming, with 100,000 hens split into flocks across five organic properties in Queensland.She says she's seen it happen with caged eggs, and has sources that say it occurs with barn-laid as well.

Phil Westwood, an independent auditor who does work for the Australian Egg Corporation Limited believes along with Ivy Wood that around half of the eggs labelled "free range" in Australia are in fact not. With no legal definition of what "free range" actually means, even farmers who are knowingly using the label in a misleading way can do so without fear of prosecution. Phil describes the worst case scenario that he has come across himself: "there are some farms that we understand that go around some of the Farmers' Markets in particular, that have virtually no chooks. They might have 20 chooks or so, but they're selling hundreds of dozens of eggs each week, and they're just buying them from the local cage farm, packaging them, and going along to Farmers' Markets and passing them off as free-range eggs and selling them for $6 or $8 a dozen."

THE ALTERNATIVE

The Free Range Farmers Association have created a label that members are allowed to use after farms have been inspected by an appointed Independent Inspector to ensure that all management practices are appropriate to the concept of free-range egg production as defined by the organisation (their standards are publicly available and cover rearing of chicks and egg production). An example of a FRFA accredited farm that goes beyond just making sure the hens are happy and uses comprehensive sustainable farming methods is Freeranger Farm in Grantville West Gippsland.

Organic and Biodynamic certification bodies such as NASAA and ACO require hens to be raised "free range" according to the definition if the state in which they are produced as well as their own standards of animal welfare which are vigorous and require that animals are not inhibited from living out their natural health conditions and social lives.