Government Response: The Free-Range Egg Marketing Standards (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2025

Technical Scrutiny point 1:                     The Regulations will remove the 16-week derogation which currently applies to the marketing of free-range eggs. This will enable free-range eggs to be marketed even when, for the protection of animal and public health, mandatory housing measures are imposed for a period longer than 16 weeks.

Housing measures are only imposed to mitigate and reduce the risk of transmission of Avian Influenza. Housing measures, alongside other disease mitigation measures, have varied in duration but are normally lifted when the risk of transmission is reduced or there is no longer a risk presented by Avian Influenza.

These provisions are conceived as being temporary, emergency measures to prevent the spread of disease.  The reference to 'temporarily' links the amendments being made to the exercise of these emergency disease prevention steps which, by their nature, are not permanent.