Selling eggs

[suekeetch]

I would like to sell eggs, advertise etc. I was told dont get caught or else. Is it hard to legally sell? My luck the very first egg I sold I would get carted off to jail. I really would like to raise quail and sell eggs and meat
thanks

[WLLady]

You can sell eggs from farmgate relatively easily. Farmgate means that the people come and buy directly from you at the farm. The eggs need to be cleaned, and kept in the fridge and you should mark your contact info on the egg cartons. But you cannot advertise as such or sell off site. If you want to sell at a farmer's market or deliver to anywhere you must have them government inspected/graded. Also, if you sell from your farm only (farmgate) but to a person that is using them in products that are sold commercially, they also need to be graded/inspected....farmgate sales are for personal use by the person coming to your farm only.....i had a problem once where someone was coming to my farm, buying up 4-5 dozen and then reselling them at 2$ more per dozen. I did some asking around and found out that if one of their customers had an issue, but they were my resold eggs, I then have an issue-as does the reseller....but i would be liable for it even though i only sold at farmgate. So i have completely stopped selling eggs to people i don't know and only sell farmgate to friends/family/neighbours etc.

[Ontario Chick]

This is from a customer point of view, since @WLLady covered the sellers part pretty extensively.
I buy eggs at a "farm gate" as we no longer have our own, and have done for couple of years now.
There is a small sign at the end of the sellers driveway, about a size of a mail box and a cooler with eggs and a piggy bank inside, also a recycling box for return cartons. I am very happy with the system.

Selling meat is a completely different thing and definitely illegal.

[Farrier1987]

Not for a long time now, but I used to post on kijiji when I had extra. Only had it up for a week or so. They had to pick up from me. Np phone no in the ad. Told them to reply to the ad with their phone no and I wouldn't reply to anything else. Then googled their phone no before I replied. But tell the neighbors and friends or people you work with. Word of mouth is best. Don't know how many a day you would have, but that makes a difference too. If you are small, mostly nobody will care. You get several hundred layers, you will get noticed.

Dam the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

[TomK]

this is one of those things that sets in my craw, because it so obviously is in place to protect the interests of the big egg producers...only being able to sell at farm gate...like really, what difference is it to anyone if you sell a dozen eggs to someone who comes to your home or if you take a dozen eggs to someone in the local town once a week?...or at a market on Saturday morning?.. I mean if its a food safety thing surely the person who got bad eggs from you would be able to tell officialdom where they got the bad eggs...you dont need a computerized all encompassing tracking system to do that. I have several customers who don't drive anymore and if there is a need for eggs I will oblige if i can. Maybe I am going to jail now. Taxes and big corps...that is who is important i guess. Hrrrrmmpfff!. Goanywhere in this country and look at small business owners, to stay in business they truly have to satisfy their customer base. If they screw up, they wont be in business very long. That goes for widgets, meat and eggs and everything. Gov't won' t be there to bail them out like they do the big guys. So where is the danger that we are supposedly being protected from with all these rules?..

[WLLady]

We were thinking about a cooler and honour pay system here, but we have too many light fingered people in the neighbourhood! Maybe if i hooked up the cash box to the electric fence so if they touched it ZAP.....but anything left at the road gets stolen these days out here. it's really quite pathetic. Our neighbours have a corn stand every year. This year not only did someone rip off 10 dozen corn that was put out, they also took the entire cash container (which was bolted to the stand-and they broke it) and ALL the plastic bags! And this was within 30 minutes of them putting it out and the stand is literally 40 feet from their front door.

Yeah, i agree, the rules suck, but.....unfortunately if you get caught the rules apply harshly. and it's not just eggs, it's milk and meat too!

[Killerbunny]

DH suggests a 4K security camera so you can identify them and take retribution later.

[Ontario Chick]

Apparently we live in a "better" neighborhood I will have to ask the "egg people" if they have any problems, but since their piggy bank is not attached to anything, and is the same one since the start I guess they are fine :)

The big egg corps aren't loosing any money on us, since we use about doz eggs a week, but if we have to get "store bough" only about a doz a month.
But then it's a well known fact that corporations have no memory, might add brain to that also.

[Killerbunny]

It's sad because our Foodbank isn't allowed to accept surplus eggs. They must be sent to local monopoly for grading and that costs. A few have said their eggs just disappeared as not acceptable when they tried. They knew because they were coloured eggs. Embarrased to admit I used to work there!

[Shnookie]

When I had extra eggs I was able to donate them to a shelter in Regina. I was actually surprised that they would take them. I called them first. They also accept home grown vegetables for their kitchen. The skating rink in the next town from me has a kitchen and for a while they were using eggs supplied by a local farmer. I don't know what happened but they had to stop using local eggs and start using store-bought eggs.