I have been selling eggs at the gate for years - just leave an honesty box by the box of eggs. Had a few eggs or the money go missing, but on the whole people are very honest.
I have probably 60 layers including ex batts. Ex batts are vaccinated, others may be, but I certainly did not have them done.
As I see it, you can sell at the gate, but not to shops, or at a boot sale or farmers market. For this you would have to be DEFRA registered, and have a packing station, with grading etc.
You are only meant to use an egg box once. But its ok for people to bring their egg box to you as many times as they wish it seems. But my egg boxes are re used and people bring them back. They have all said they cannot see the point in wasting good boxes and they are right.
At this time of year, I do wipe the eggs over to get the worst of the mud off. My hens are free range, and do transfer mud to the eggs. I think some people may be put off if they saw a really mud egg, and would fear it was not fit to eat, which it is of course. I keep the really muddy ones for us!!
The egg box itself, must have on the front, your name and address, a note to tell the customer to keep refrigerated (but you don't put them in the fridge at your end, which may seem strange, when you consider you are telling the customer to do it!_) and either a date when the eggs were laid, or a best before date. I put a best before date, and usually its three weeks from the day the eggs were laid. I am pretty certain a proper free range egg can go nearly 4 weeks and be ok. Anyway, whats laid here today will be sold by tomorrow, so they are fresh enough I think.
Do not bother with different sizes, just sell mixed boxes for a set amount. Mine are £2 per dozen, but i could get more if I put the price up.
As to giving people food poisoning, I have only once had one lady complain that an egg was "off". Cannot see it was, but customer is always right, and she happily went away with 6 free eggs. The likelyhood of you selling a dodgy egg is remote......we cannot see inside an egg, and yes, things do go wrong, but cannot see you can be negligent as the poisoning could be caused by the customers cooking or something. I would not worry about it.
I am doing well with my egg sales, and people come back week after week. Just have a problem in winter, when they cannot understand the hens stop laying!!
As to having signs saying free range. My sign says they are. I cannot say organic though, because of the fact their feed cannot be traced to an organic farm.
I know people get round this by saying fresh farm eggs, although some are defintely not free range as I have seen how they are kept. And that is wrong to say they are free range in these circumstances.+++++