BRITAIN’S egg shortage is being worsened by stockpiling an expert has claimed.
Andrew Joret, from the British Egg Industry Council, told GB News: “At the end of the day, what we need is pricing that producers have the confidence to carry on producing free-range eggs, it’s as simple as that. You mentioned bird flu, and we’ve lost about 700,000 letters in the UK to bird flu. What we need to see is better returns to producers and then that egg production can come back on stream. Also, things that we’ve seen particularly this week, as soon as you get news of shortages, of course, what people do is they go and stock up. The biggest question to our online website this week has been how to freeze eggs, which clearly tells you that there’s an element of stockpiling behaviour. So, if people just got back to buying the eggs, they need now rather than thinking I’m gonna buy a few extras, actually the situation wouldn’t be anything like as bad as it has been.
He added: “Electricity represents about five pence of the cost of producing a dozen eggs and actually you don’t put heat into free-range houses, there is enough bird heat with insulation in the house to keep the house at a comfortable temperature. What you do have is ventilation to remove to keep the air fresh and so on. So, electricity is a factor because electricity isn’t just a factor for the poultry house. There are all sorts of energy costs that go into producing eggs in terms of transport and everything else which is impacting the sector.”
His comments come as British shoppers looking for eggs have been met with empty shelves as the United Kingdom’s “largest ever” outbreak of bird flu and rising costs have placed pressure on egg supplies across the country.
His comments come as customers at British supermarket retailers Sainsbury’s and Tesco found eggs out of stock, while retailer Lidl has put a ration on eggs at some of its supermarket branches – limiting each customer to three units of eggs due to the shortage.
Elsewhere, breakfast menus at restaurant and pub chains across the country are also being curtailed, with chefs seeking alternatives for eggs as they grapple with the shortages.
“We are now facing this year, the largest ever outbreak of bird flu and are seeing rapid escalation in the number of cases on commercial farms and in backyard birds across England,” the United Kingdom’s Chief Veterinary Officer, Christine Middlemiss said earlier this week. “The risk of kept birds being exposed to disease has reached a point where it is now necessary for all birds to be housed until further notice.”
There have been 234 cases of bird flu in England since October 2021, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says a record 48 million birds have been culled across the UK and Europe during the 2021 to 2022 avian flu epidemic season.
