Egg farmer Ioan Humphreys has called out supermarkets for “not paying egg farmers”, instead blaming avian flu on the shortages of eggs on the shelves.
Taking to social media, Humphreys posted a video contradicting supermarket claims that egg shortages are occurring due to avian flu, stating that retailers are raising prices for the customer but not paying enough for farmers to continue producing eggs.
Humphreys said: “Supermarkets are going to tell you the egg shortages is because of avian flu. Which to be fair, there has been a lot of cases of avian flu. But you want to know the real reason why there’s an egg shortage is because the supermarkets won’t pay the farmers for the eggs.”
He revealed supermarkets have upped their prices for consumers, however, this increase has not been filtered through to farmers.
“Our cost of producing these eggs has skyrocketed – feed, electric, the price of new birds, that’s gone up, but our price of eggs has stayed the same. We physically can’t afford to produce these eggs,” Humphreys said.
Currently, eight million fewer free-range hens have been ordered for next year’s flocks, which Humphreys says will result in just under eight million British eggs not being produced every day.
He concludes: “If the supermarkets paid us a fair price for our eggs, then we would stock our sheds and there’ll be more sheds going up, and the UK could be self-sufficient in great British eggs.”
This follows the news that, in July, The British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA) called on supermarkets and egg buyers to ensure that the price rises in shops are reflected in the money paid to farmers.
Data seen by BFREPA showed shoppers are paying 20p more for a dozen free range eggs, but farmers are only receiving an extra 4p.
Last week, Sainsbury’s CEO, Simon Roberts, said the supermarket was “closely watching” the recent bird flu developments that have seen farmers across the country warn of Christmas turkey shortages.
Claiming the Big 4 grocer was well prepared for potential disruptions, Roberts said: “Avian flu is a serious issue and one that we’re watching very closely and we’re not complacent about this issue at all.”
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Egg farmers have been claiming they are underpaid and are all going to go bust for decades. Most people in the grocery business stopped listening to their nonsense a long time ago.
Toomy Lipton not sure where you got your facts from but like your household bills feed and electricity have massively risen and this has affected all our food producers, the supermarkets were told to give more of their profits back to the producers, but they did not listen, average price farmer gets is 96p a doz to cover all costs of feed the bird and all other costs, supermarkets pay 98p so they are losing 2p per doz and when you multiply that each day by thousands of eggs don’t need to be Einstein to work out your losing money very quickly so they stopped restocking and now there is an egg shortage, supermarkets rule the country in what we pay and what they pay producers, the government use to control all these costs but sadly the supermarkets now run it all