A UK farmer has warned that shoppers may see further egg shortages on supermarket shelves later this year.
An egg farmer named Llyr Jones, who’s 32,000 hens supply eggs for Tesco, told the BBC that factors including soaring energy prices last year meant some farmers left the industry.
He said it would take time for it to return to “normality” now farmers have “started re-stocking flocks”.
Last year, egg farmers saw a dramatic rise in energy bills alongside nationwide cases of avian flu, which resulted in British supermarkets having to ration supplies for shoppers.
Recent Defra figures show egg production is down by 2.9% in England in Wales in just three months.
However, production is down by nearly a quarter (24.6%) compared to the first three months of 2022.
Meanwhile, egg imports are up 11% compared to the same period last year, with Italian eggs now landing on supermarket shelves.
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Jones noted that last year his feed bills rose from £30,000 a month to £50,000, largely due to the invasion of Ukraine, which is a major producer of the corn used for bird feed.
Additionally, getting hens back on farms takes nearly eight months, according to Jones, and then another two months to get them producing eggs.
Therefore, customers may start seeing more white eggs because some farmers replaced their flocks with white hens, which he claims are more productive than brown egg-laying hens.
However, customers should not notice a difference in quality or taste.
“We’ve had decades of small inflationary pressures in the food industry… which allowed supermarkets to do 12 month contracts. Well, now these sudden increases in costs means they should really respond within a matter of days and weeks.”
