Roy Benford's efforts started last year when he asked the Government to tell him where the eggs he was buying originated.

Now a Government adjudication panel, the Information Tribunal, is deciding whether the origin of eggs should be made publicly available.
Each egg is labelled with a number on it that identifies its origins, but at the moment the public is not being allowed to discover which producer the number corresponds to.

Mr Benford, who incidentally discovered a fraudulently labelled egg that he bought locally in the course of proceedings, said: "It started out as something small, but now it is something to keep me amused. The register should be published.

"If you are a tattooist you would have to register and the district council has a list of all the premises.

"My argument is that egg producers should fall into the same category along with meat."

The campaigner's interest in the subject was sparked by the discovery of a massive fraud last year.

Unscrupulous traders, who are now under police investigation, had been marking up to 1.4 million eggs per week as free range, despite them being from battery hens. The traders were making themselves a fortune – there is up to 50p discrepancy in cost between the two types.

Mr Benford, who lives on the Highway in Great Staughton, said: "They just made the numbers up, which was silly, as they could have gone down the local shop and copied the number.

"The discovery of the fraud is why the price of eggs has gone up because so many have been taken off the market."

Part of the reasoning behind the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs' initial refusal to release details of the producers is that such incidents could increase.

However, Mr Benford does not agree with this.

He said: "It is not going to make things worse. It can't make them worse than it has been with the fraud.

"They also say it is for health and safety reasons as the farms could get targeted by animal welfare groups.

"But it is the secrets that leads to rumours that leads to the interest of these groups.

"It's got nothing to do with having it in the public domain."

The incidental discovery of fraudulently-labelled eggs being available locally came in evidence presented to the case by the Chief Egg Marketing Inspector

In a witness statement the inspector said: "When I checked records of registrations for producers, I found that the code provided (by Mr Benford) was not an active producer code number at that time. I recognised this code to be similar to that of a business under suspicion of fraudulent activities and subject to an on-going investigation."

The Information Tribunal is currently in a summer recess and hopes to make a decision on the case in September.