There is a global egg shortage occurring; do Canadians need to be concerned about this?

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“We are facing an unprecedented global food crisis and all signs suggest we have not yet seen the worst. For the last three years hunger numbers have repeatedly hit new peaks. Let me be clear: things can and will get worse unless there is a large scale and coordinated effort to address the root causes of this crisis. We cannot have another year of record hunger.” U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley

When the pandemic was in its infancy, the Toronto Caribbean Newspaper began to share information about what was to come. One of the major challenges that we knew was coming was the issue surrounding the global food crisis, which has intensified, and things are going to get really bad in 2023.

Two-thirds of European fertilizer production has already been shut down, currency problems are causing massive headaches for poor nations that need to import food, global weather patterns continue to be completely crazy, and the bird flu is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys all over the planet. It has caused another shortage that you may, or may not have heard about; now there is a global shortage of eggs, a breakfast staple for many here in Canada. Let’s find out exactly what is happening with this story.

France started to experience an egg shortage in October 2022. The 1,500 billion eggs seen in production in 2021 declined in 2022. Egg production is reported to decline: 8% in France, 3% in the EU overall, and 4.6% in the United States.

Prices have been rising for eggs globally as supply has been dropping due to a series of factors; the factor most reported on the news is the outbreak of the bird flu, which is killing off egg-laying chickens. This means that you are paying much more for eggs at the grocery store right now. In the U.S., egg prices rose 49% in 2022, much higher than the 12% rise in overall food prices. Egg prices have risen in at least 47 states, with some states seeing egg prices tripling over the past year.

The U.S. has experienced one of the worst breakouts of avian flu that has impacted 50.3 million birds since early February 2022. According to CNBC, 37 million egg-laying hens died in 2022, and egg production has declined by about 10%.

There are reports coming out of Europe that some farmers have also accused retailers of not paying a fair price for eggs as production costs skyrocket. These farmers are revealing that the shortage isn’t just down to bird flu.

Apparently supermarkets aren’t paying British farmers a fair price, and are instead choosing to import their eggs from countries like Italy. It comes at a time when farmers are facing soaring production costs due rising energy bills and soaring prices of essentials, such as fertilizer and animal feed.

“All the supermarket has to do is pay a fair price to British farmers and the British farmers will produce British eggs,” one of the farmers stated clearly.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) explained that there were a number of factors behind the current shortages, “We understand the difficulties raised by the rising cost of feed and energy over the last year linked to the outbreak bird flu are causing problems for farmers and we are working with industry to monitor the egg market.”

Other media sources have also brought up the fact that the war in Ukraine is playing a role in chicken and egg shortages, as both Russia and Ukraine are major producers of wheat – a key ingredient in chicken feed.

Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University doesn’t think that Canadians need to be too concerned about the egg shortages that are happening around the world. He does note that the big variable is the avian flu. “We don’t know exactly how the flu will impact barns across the country.”

What can be done? Well it doesn’t seem like we can do much. Our malfunctioning food supply system is due to failed government policy that has prioritized mega-corp market-share and profit over resilience.

It is for this same reason that farmers can’t just open up commercial egg farms; they need government-mediated access to production and markets through the marketing boards, which protects existing producers from competition.

We are facing a “perfect storm”, and that “perfect storm” is only going to get worse in the months ahead.