Sell eggs, honey and produce from home or the farm gate

These rules apply in England. They cover selling your own eggs, honey and produce straight to customers at your door, your gate or a local market.

If you sell eggs from your own hens

You can sell ungraded eggs directly to the people who will eat them, whatever the size of your flock. The Eggs and Chicks (England) Regulations 2009 exempt that sale from grading and most marking rules. If you use the exemption, you cannot show a class or weight grade on the eggs. Duck, goose and quail eggs fall outside the egg marketing rules, but general food law applies to them.

Breaking the egg marketing rules is an offence. A magistrates' court can punish it with a fine.

Door-to-door sales

Door-to-door selling means a sale made during an unsolicited visit by you to a customer's home, to another person's home or to the customer's workplace. Your region of production is set out in Schedule 5 to the Eggs and Chicks (England) Regulations 2009. If customers order in advance and you deliver, ask your APHA Egg Marketing Inspector whether the delivery counts before you set up a round.

Gate stalls and honesty boxes

The exemption turns on where the sale takes place. A stall or honesty box on your holding is on your production site. A box in a lay-by or anywhere off your holding is not, and a roadside stall is not a local public market.

Local public markets

Ungraded eggs can be sold at a market only if it counts as a local public market. A market whose right to trade comes from a grant or an Act qualifies. A temporary market qualifies only if it is outdoors, off the highway, has at least 5 stalls and any notice required under section 37(2) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 has been given.

An indoor craft fair or Christmas market in a hall does not qualify unless its right to trade comes from a grant or an Act. Ask the organiser which applies before you take eggs.

If you keep only a few hens

Registering your birds with APHA is separate from egg marketing registration. You need it even if you sell only the surplus from a few hens kept for your family.

Sell honey

You can sell a product as honey, or under a reserved name such as blossom honey or comb honey, only if it meets the composition rules in Schedule 1 of the Honey (England) Regulations 2015. Every jar must show at least the name, the country where the honey was harvested and its net weight.

Weigh and pack by net weight

Section 11 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985 bars you from using weighing equipment in a prescribed class for trade unless an inspector or approved verifier has passed and stamped it. Ask Trading Standards whether your scales are in a prescribed class.

Check whether you must register as a food business

Egg marketing registration and food business registration are separate. Food hygiene law, including the duty to register, does not apply when you directly supply small quantities of primary products to the people who will eat them, or to local shops and restaurants that supply them. Eggs and the fruit and vegetables you grow are primary products. The law does not define small quantities, so your council applies the rule to your sales.

Ask your council's environmental health team before your first sale, and tell it whether you sell eggs, honey or both. You must register as a food business if you sell more than small quantities, process what you produce or sell food you did not produce yourself. Cakes baked with your eggs and chutney made from your vegetables count as processing.

Food safety law applies either way. You must not sell unsafe food.

Pay tax on your sales

Regular sales of eggs, honey and produce for profit are trading income. The trading allowance lets you earn a small amount from them without telling HMRC.

Where to get help

Ask the APHA Egg Marketing Inspectors about egg sales and registration, your council's environmental health team about food business registration, and Trading Standards about honey labels and weights.