More than double the number of free-range hens are needed to ensure that every egg sold as free range is genuine.
Each day, hundreds of thousands of barn-laid eggs are passed off as free range in an egg-substitution racket that costs Australian consumers billions of dollars each year, Ivy Inwood, the president of the Free Range Egg & Poultry Association of Australia, told The Sunday Age.
Two years ago, egg substitution was estimated to have cost consumers $13 million annually but the problem has become worse as the sale of free-range-branded eggs continues to soar, she said.
The true cost of the scam might never be known because proper records are not kept, and governments have left themselves effectively powerless to police the egg-substitution issue.
"The ACCC has its hands tied because there are no agreed standards, they can't do anything," Mrs Inwood said.
"You can call anything free range and get away with it."
Mrs Inwood has called on all Australian governments to urgently develop a nationwide, legally binding definition of free-range eggs, including how they should be produced.
Any new laws should require that laying hens be allowed out of sheds at first light, have adequate space for foraging and that all hens should be reared as free rangers from hatchlings.
She said Australia had about 1 million genuine free-range hens, but would need as many as 2.5 million free-range birds to ensure that every egg sold as free-range was genuine.
"Half the free-range eggs are falsely labelled because they're not coming from genuine free-range farms," Mrs Inwood said.
"The public is paying big bikkies for these things, so we need to get genuine free-range eggs."
She said some egg producers waited until their hens had laid before letting them out of their barns each day, which could be as late as 2pm.
"There are all sorts of excuses," she said. "They don't let them (hens) out when it's raining. But chooks love it.
"In a genuine free-range environment, when you open your doors it's up to the bird whether she stays in or goes out.
"The animal is like us, so in the heat it goes to coolness.
"It's out in the morning and around 11 o'clock it looks for shade and somewhere quiet and then it goes out again and starts foraging. You've got to let it do what it wants.
"You have to have your (barn) doors open," she said, "because the public is paying for this."
Without adequate laws and proper labelling, Australian consumers had no practical way of differentiating a barn-laid egg from a genuine free-range egg, she said.
"A lot of people say they can taste a difference, but an egg's an egg, basically. A free-range egg does have more folic acid but you would have to get it tested."
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