Journal article

Capturing the meaning of "free range": The contest between producers, supermarkets and consumers for the higher welfare egg label in Australia

Rachel Carey, Christine Parker, Gyorgy Scrinis

JOURNAL OF RURAL STUDIES | PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD | Published : 2017

Abstract

This paper shows how the Australian egg industry maintained its preferred definition of “free range” eggs in the face of a powerful consumer-oriented challenge to its labelling practices. We show how a consumer law initiative intended to enhance consumer confidence and address misleading labelling of industrial-scale egg production as “free range”, was reframed through the policy consultation process, so that the primary policy problem became one of assuring industry certainty in a volatile contest for control over the governance of “free range” labelling. Drawing on notions of contests for power in regulatory space, we show how a policy coalition of egg industry and government primary indus..

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