Producers risking reputation and law

We are all consumers, and we expect to know what we are buying.

We take it for granted our food will be labelled with a list of ingredients and their place of origin.

More of us are reading those labels before buying, judging products against one another and looking out for "nasties", according to our diet and lifestyle of choice.

One thing we bring to the supermarket is faith; a belief the labels are correct and the food we buy is safe.

We believe the producer is honest and there is truth in the details on the packaging.

We might be surrounded by scams, cons and thievery in our everyday lives, but when we step over the threshold of our favourite grocery store we expect the truth to be sacrosanct and the premises to be soaked in honesty.

To even suggest otherwise could turn our world upside-down and give us no place to hide from those who wish to take our money and our innocence with one transaction.

So how did we feel when egg farmer John Garnett was convicted after two years of successfully selling cage eggs under a free range label?

And how shaken is our faith to find he's not the only one misleading the marketplace and selling one thing as another?

Having discovered so many people have been duped by these producers, do we still shop with the same amount of confidence and security? We should.

Not long ago, there were no such labels on our food and our trust in the producer was total and often unfounded.

It was later we found out that strawberry flavouring in ice cream contained an ingredient also present in anti-freeze.

We are at a stage where doing such a thing is bad for business and false labelling is illegal.

The law, at least, is on our side.