PIP'S TIPS - Eggsposing Egg Carton Labels

9 September 2026

The different farming types

Hey Egg Eaters.... bit of a long tip from me this week, but it's interesting to understand what all those labels really mean - something I get asked about often when people are standing confused in the supermarket egg aisle. Quick overview of the farming types first (I'll go deeper on this in a future post):

• Cage - hens live fully in a wire cage, with no laying box or perches, 5-15 "flatmates," and no room to spread their wings.
• Colony - a bigger cage, with up to 60 flatmates, a small perch, a darkened laying box and a textile scratch pad about the size of a A4 sheet of paper.
• Cage Free - otherwise known as Barn.
• Barn - up to 50,000 hens in one big shed, with no outdoor access.
• Free Range - access to the outdoors from a shed or barn, though the amount of actual outdoor access varies a lot from farm to farm.

What the carton terms actually mean

• "All Natural" - meaningless marketing; it just means it's a real egg from a real hen.
• "Farm Fresh" - also pure marketing; it just means it came from a hen on a commercial farm.
• "Organic" - in NZ, only true Certified Organic producers can use this term, and they carry a certifier logo. Our organic eggs are AsureQuality Certified.  Hens must be free range or pasture-raised on certified organic land and fed only certified-organic feed, with no chemicals, synthetic fertilisers or sprays, and soil and water are rigorously tested. Organic feed costs 47% more than non-organic due to the certification and farming process. 
• "No Hormones" - meaningless; hormone use in NZ egg-laying hens has been banned for decades.
• "Omega-3 Enriched" - achieved by adding flaxseed to feed (which provides ALA omega-3, versus DHA from fish or algae). Given the modest omega-3 boost and the extra cost, you're honestly better off just eating fish or walnuts.
• "Vegetarian-Fed / Vegetarian Diet" - a bit misleading, since chickens are naturally omnivores that eat bugs, worms and plants. A healthy, protein-fed chicken produces a healthy egg, and protein deprivation can actually cause feather-plucking and bullying behaviours in the flock.
• "Pasture-Raised" - hens spent all or part of their lives with access to pasture.

NZ labelling and packaging rules are set by MPI - you can find their guidance on labelling and selling shell eggs at mpi.govt.nz if you want to dig further.