BFREPA meets with Minister to discuss egg market

John Retson, chairman of the British Free Range Egg Producers’ Association (BFREPA) recently met Agriculture Minister Jim Paice in London to discuss the current state of the egg industry and the egg shortages that have arisen in the United Kingdom and across the rest of the European Union.

The shortages have followed the introduction of the EU ban on conventional laying cages at the beginning of this year. The processing sector has been particularly badly hit in this country. Wholesale egg prices have increased by as much as 300 per cent as a result of shortages. Elsewhere, the French National Union of Egg Industries and Professionals reported a shortfall of 21 million eggs a week, the union for the Belgian egg products industry said the egg processing sector was struggling to meet demand because of the cage ban and in Bulgaria egg prices doubled in the space of two weeks.

The Minister called representatives of the egg and food industries together to discuss the current state of the market and John Retson said the meeting was a useful one. "It was a worthwhile meeting," said John. "The Minister is doing his best to ensure that all parties know exactly what is happening."

Others at the meeting included representatives of the British Egg Industry Council (BEIC) and National Farmers’ Union (NFU), as well as representatives from the food manufacturing industry and foodservice sector. John said the Minister was keen to ensure that everyone knew what was happening across Europe as well as the UK and why it was happening. In Spain, for example - one of the EU’s biggest egg producers and one of the states that had failed to meet the January 1 deadline for the introduction of the conventional cage ban, the authorities were acting to take battery units out of production.

"The Minister gave us a comprehensive run-down of what he understands the position to be in Europe," said John. "He wanted to be sure that the reason for the dramatic tightening up of the egg market was fully understood by everyone at the meeting."

The Minister and his Government have been criticised by some in the egg industry. UK egg industry leaders had been warning for some time that large numbers of egg producers across the EU would fail to meet the deadline for the conventional cage ban and that up to a third of the EU laying flock would be housed in illegal units after the ban came into force. They called on the UK Government to introduce a unilateral ban on imports. The Government refused to so, saying that such action would be difficult under EU law.

The BEIC started judicial review proceedings to challenge the Government’s interpretation of the law, but subsequently dropped those proceedings after Jim Paice announced that an agreement had been reached with the EU Commission to prevent illegal eggs being exported to the UK. He said in a letter to the BEIC that, under the agreement between the Commission and non-compliant member states, ’eggs from conventional cages could only go to processing in the member state of origin and could not be exported’ and that the ’egg products created could only be used in food products or industrial products manufactured within the member state of origin’.

The European Commission has begun formal legal proceedings against 13 member states that have failed to the meet the deadline. Those states are Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Romania.

The recent meeting with Jim Paice took place before the latest increases in producer prices, and John Retson warned the Minister of the potential for damage to the high welfare egg sector unless producers were able to make a reasonable return. John has been warning major supermarkets for nearly a year that significant losses were driving many free range producers out of production, threatening a potential shortage of British high welfare eggs in the future. Despite the general shortage of egg, free range is still in over-production in the UK, but John told the Minister that the future of British free range was still under threat. Results of a survey conducted by BFREPA last year indicated that nearly 13 per cent of the country’s commercial free range flock could disappear if producers continued to lose money.

"Free range is still in over-production at the moment but people are leaving free range egg production," said John. "They are still coming out and we could very quickly go from oversupply to not enough. That will make the shortages worse." He said it was vital that free range producers earned enough money to not only make a living but also to be able to re-invest in their businesses. If shortages of British egg continued and processors looked elsewhere for their eggs it may well prove difficult to get them back.