Title 7, AgricultureRelease 119-110

§2706 Permissive Terms and Conditions in Orders

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

Last updated Sep 22, 2026|Official source

Summary

Orders under this law must include one or more specific kinds of rules and no others unless another part of the law allows it. They can require advertising, sales-promotion, and consumer-education programs to raise general demand for eggs, egg products, spent fowl, and products of spent fowl. Those programs cannot mention a private brand if the Secretary thinks it would unfairly hurt others, and they cannot use unfair or deceptive acts or make false claims about competing products. Orders can also fund and carry out research, marketing, and development projects and studies to improve how these products are produced, sold, used, or made into new products. Orders can make certain egg-industry people—like hatchery operators, baby-chick sellers, pullet dealers, egg producers, processors, and spent-fowl handlers—keep books and file reports as the order requires. Information collected must be kept confidential by USDA staff, the Egg Board, and contractors, and may only be released in specific legal proceedings or as the Secretary allows for general statistics, refund summaries, or naming someone who broke an order and what part was broken. Any officer or employee who breaks this secrecy can be fined up to $1,000, jailed up to one year, or both; Egg Board or USDA employees may also be removed from office. Orders may include other incidental terms needed to carry out these rules.

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)Advertising, sales promotion, and consumer education plans or projects; prohibition on reference to private brand or trade name and use of unfair or deceptive acts or practices

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)Research, marketing, and development projects and studies

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)Recordkeeping and reporting requirements; disclosure of confidential information; violations; penalties

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)Incidental and necessary terms and conditions

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 7, Agriculture

Last Updated

Sep 22, 2026

Release point: 119-110