I quite agree (I was inspected - have sheep chickens and geese - and they then gave me a certificate to carry on using chicken pellets, which has fish oil and therefore isnt veggie which seems to frustrate them, but they cant avoid it as chickens arent veggie and cant cope without)!
All I was trying to highlight was that smallholders already get lumped with the blame for disease outbreaks by many, even tho most have been caused by large scale practices, and that one of the few dispensations left for smaller scale keepers was the one for not registering if you have under 50 chickens.
That will surely end if people publicly ignore the rules or encourage others to. Makes no difference if the eggs are for own use or not as far as the feeding regulations are concerned. Nor whether the owner thinks of them as pets or not.
Sadly the concept of proportionality doesnt enter into it with the authorities where animal health scares are concerned, and since they could tighten regs further, it is a concern that they might if pushed too far.