Title 7AgricultureRelease 119-73

§2706 Permissive terms and conditions in orders

Title 7 › Chapter CHAPTER 60— - EGG RESEARCH AND CONSUMER INFORMATION › § 2706

Last updated Apr 6, 2026|Official source

Summary

Orders under this chapter must include one or more specific conditions listed here, and no others except as allowed in section 2707. They can require plans for advertising, sales promotion, and consumer education about eggs, egg products, spent fowl, and products of spent fowl, paid for from collected funds and aimed at increasing general demand. Such advertising may not name private brands if the Secretary of Agriculture finds it would be unfair, and it must not use unfair or deceptive practices or make false claims about competing products. Orders can also fund research, marketing, and development projects to improve sale, use, production, or new products and share the results. Orders may require hatcheries, chick sellers, egg producers, processors, and spent-fowl traders to keep books and file reports the order sets. The Department of Agriculture, the Egg Board, and contractors must keep that information confidential, except for general statistics, refund reports, or naming violators as directed by the Secretary. Anyone who illegally reveals the information can be fined up to $1,000, jailed up to one year, or both, and Egg Board or USDA employees may be removed from office. Orders may also include other terms that are consistent with these rules and needed to carry them out.

Full Legal Text

Title 7, §2706

Agriculture — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

Orders issued pursuant to this chapter shall contain one or more of the following terms and conditions, and except as provided in section 2707 of this title, no others.
(a)Providing for the establishment, issuance, effectuation, and administration of appropriate plans or projects for advertising, sales promotion, and consumer education with respect to the use of eggs, egg products, spent fowl, and products of spent fowl, and for the disbursement of necessary funds for such purposes: Provided, however, That any such plan or project shall be directed toward increasing the general demand for eggs, egg products, spent fowl, or products of spent fowl. No reference to a private brand or trade name shall be made if the Secretary determines that such reference will result in undue discrimination against eggs, egg products, spent fowl, or products of spent fowl of other persons: And provided further, That no such advertising, consumer education, or sales promotion programs shall make use of unfair or deceptive acts or practices in behalf of eggs, egg products, spent fowl, or products of spent fowl or unfair or deceptive acts or practices with respect to quality, value, or use of any competing product.
(b)Providing for, establishing, and carrying on research, marketing, and development projects, and studies with respect to sale, distribution, marketing, utilization, or production of eggs, egg products, spent fowl, and products of spent fowl, and the creation of new products thereof, to the end that the marketing and utilization of eggs, egg products, spent fowl, and products of spent fowl may be encouraged, expanded, improved or made more acceptable, and the data collected by such activities may be disseminated and for the disbursement of necessary funds for such purposes.
(c)Providing that hatchery operators, persons engaged in the sale of egg-type baby chicks and started pullet dealers, persons engaged in the production of commercial eggs and persons who receive or otherwise acquire eggs from such persons and who process, prepare for market, or market such eggs, including eggs of their own production, and persons engaged in the purchase, sale, or processing of spent fowl, maintain and make available for the inspection such books and records as may be required by any order issued pursuant to this chapter and for the filing of reports by such persons at the time, in the manner, and having content prescribed by the order, to the end that information and data shall be made available to the Egg Board and to the Secretary which is appropriate or necessary to the effectuation, administration or enforcement of this chapter, or of any order or regulation issued pursuant to this chapter: Provided, however, That all information so obtained shall be kept confidential by all officers and employees of the Department of Agriculture, the Egg Board, and by all officers and employees of contracting agencies having access to such information, and only such information so furnished or acquired as the Secretary deems relevant shall be disclosed by them, and then only in a suit or administrative hearing brought at the direction, or upon the request, of the Secretary, or to which he or any officer of the United States is a party, and involving the order with reference to which the information so to be disclosed was furnished or acquired. Nothing in this section shall be deemed to prohibit (1) the issuance of general statements based upon the reports of the number of persons subject to an order or statistical data collected therefrom, which statements do not identify the information furnished by any person, (2) the publication, by the direction of the Secretary, of general statements relating to refunds made by the Egg Board during any specific period, or (3) the publication by direction of the Secretary of the name of any person violating any order, together with a statement of the particular provisions of the order violated by such person. Any such officer or employee violating the provision of this subsection shall, upon conviction, be subjected to a fine of not more than $1,000 or to imprisonment for not more than one year, or to both, and if an officer or employee of the Egg Board or Department of Agriculture shall be removed from office.
(d)Terms and conditions incidental to and not inconsistent with the terms and conditions specified in this chapter and necessary to effectuate the other provisions of such order.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

7 U.S.C. § 2706

Title 7Agriculture

Last Updated

Apr 6, 2026

Release point: 119-73