Local News in Brief : Egg Rancher Sentenced

An egg rancher accused of selling more than 8,000 pounds of contaminated liquid eggs that were eventually distributed to commercial bakeries was sentenced Monday to one year of probation and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine.

Stefan Illy, 59, owner of Sunnyslope Farms in Riverside County, pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to three misdemeanor counts of processing and selling liquid eggs without inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming he hadn’t known that federal inspection was required.

“There is no such thing as a white lie; it’s either a lie or the truth, and if this was a violation of the law, I did not know that,” Illy told U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer.

There is no evidence that there was any contamination in the liquid eggs when federal authorities seized them from Illy’s ranch, said his attorney, Byron K. McMillan. The eggs sat unrefrigerated for at least 10 hours on a loading dock before being shipped to a laboratory before inspection and might have become contaminated during that period, he said.