MARCH NEWS
UK Egg Centre
UK Egg Centre Ltd is the leading importer and distributor of egg products to the UK.
EUROPEAN MARKETS Avian Flu Update ?- Most birds across Europe are now housed due to Avian Flu.?As of Wednesday 1st February, eggs originating from Free Range Flocks in Norfolk, Suffolk and part of Essex will also need to be labelled as barn eggs.?The rest of England and Wales will follow as of 27th of February. However, Defra will allow the same packaging concessions that were granted last year, according to the Defra website.?
These commencement dates marks the end of the 16-week grace period given after the introduction of the housing orders. At present Scotland does not have housing orders for their Free-Range birds.
Although the current highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) season is by no means over, there are early signs of a decline in the reporting of new outbreaks in Europe.
So far in 2023, 141 outbreaks have been reported in commercial poultry flocks. This is based on the latest update of the Animal Disease Information System by the?European Commission?(EC; as of February?12).?
One or more outbreaks have occurred in 15?countries covered by the EC since the start of the year. Spain has registered its first cases of the year in this category. Luxembourg’s recently reported outbreak in commercial poultry appears to have been reclassified as afflicting captive birds.?
Based on information from the EC, Poland?(46?outbreaks so far this year) has overtaken France?(45) as having the most confirmed cases in this category. These represent increases of six and five outbreaks, respectively, since the EC’s previous update dated February?5.?
These two nations are followed by the Czech Republic with 15 outbreaks since the start of 2023, and Germany with 10. Each of the other countries has a total so far of no more than four outbreaks.?
Latest official notification to the?World Organisation for Animal Health?(WOAH) from France covers a further five outbreaks linked to this virus variant. Involving a total of 34,100?commercial poultry, the outbreaks began in the period February?4-7. All were at premises in four different towns in C?tes d’Armor — a department in the northwestern region of Brittany.?
In early February, the H5N1 HPAI virus was detected for the first time in Spain’s commercial poultry since December of 2022. According to the latest WOAH report, it was the cause of death of 1,200 out of 9,000?meat turkeys at a farm in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.?
So far this year, HPAI has been confirmed in 52?poultry flocks in Poland, according to the nation’s?chief veterinary office. Directly impacted have been more than 1.01?million birds.
At the end of January, HPAI was confirmed in a flock of around 32,000?broiler breeders in Fife in eastern Scotland.?
In addition, the United Kingdom?(U.K.) government agriculture department,?Defra?reports two further farm outbreaks involving the H5N1 virus serotype in poultry — one in Stirling in Scotland, and one in Newtown in Wales.?
As of February?19, total outbreaks among commercial and hobby poultry in the U.K. since October of 2022 stands at 172. It comprises 145 infections in England, 21 in Scotland, five in Wales, and one in Northern Ireland.
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Nationwide, 13 outbreaks in commercial poultry have occurred over the previous 28 days, according to Germany’s veterinary reference laboratory,?Friedrich-Loeffler Institute?(FLI; as of February?16).?
Overall, the Italian outbreak series involved more than 995,000?poultry at 30?premises between September and December of last year.?
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So far this week there are no further outbreaks announced and hopefully as the European lockdown continues this helps to stop anymore spread of the disease.
Where will our eggs come from in 2023? ?
As reported across the globe recently, egg producers are pulling out of production and moving to alternative farming methods as the rise in costs are just far too high to sustain and the return of investments are far higher in other areas of agriculture.?Most European countries are reporting a reduction in laying flocks of between 20-30% and there are many reasons why and here are the top 3:-
1)???Prices achieved from customers are way too low.
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2)???Planning permission is getting even harder due to new rules over environment impacts, new ammonia threshold levels and the turnaround time can be anything from 6-12 months.?
3)???The cost of building poultry sheds has also increased way above inflation and along with the increases in the cost of borrowing; many questions will be asked if it is even sustainable if sales contracts can’t be guaranteed to get the targeted return.
Building confidence in this sector gest harder and harder specially with the continued and increase risk with Avian Flu as it seems to get worse every year?
The whole supply chain needs to be aligned and in agreement over pricing structures.
The NFU calculates that UK egg production has fallen to its lowest level in 9 years whilst UK Egg packers packed almost 1billion fewer eggs in 2022 than they did in 2019.
The egg industry always bounces back, as pullet orders start to pick up the industry will see most new orders come into lay later summer / early autumn so it’s 7-8 months of current shortages and high prices until more egg becomes available.
UK DEFRA Egg Statistics report that during the last quarter of 2022 there was a 9.6% decrease on eggs that went through UK packing stations on the same period in the previous year with just a 7.7% increase on price.
200 MILLION BIRDS CULLED WORLDWIDE
Since early last year, bird flu, or avian influenza, has ravaged farms around the world, leading to the deaths of more than 200 million birds because of the disease or mass culls, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) told Reuters.
This has affected markets all over the world as trade is pulled from one country to another.?
America Control for Central Diseases report 58.5 million birds culled.
Outside of Europe outbreaks are reported in Argentina, Uruguay, Cambodia, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, and China
Mexico has 556 million laying birds and has culled only 5.9 million comparing more than 4 million culled in the UK with 37.3 million at that start of 2022.
Japan recently announces a cull of almost 10 million bids amid avian flu outbreaks.
This causes concern as the any shortfalls will be filled from egg being traded from Europe thus causing more impact onto the European egg market.
CURRENT MARKET SUMMARY
The markets continue to be very challenging throughout the whole supply chain.?The perfect storm predicted for 2025 seems to be here now where demand is at an all-time high, but supply is at an all-time low, with no signs of any significant improvements.
Whilst there are reports of increases of laying hens coming on board; the eggs laid will not be available until late summer or early autumn, therefore indicating that these market levels are here to stay for the time being.?For many egg processors manufacturing powdered egg, powder production has been reduced in order sell liquid egg which at the moment is providing a faster turnaround for cash flow let alone better margins.
Whilst all production systems remain tight on availability, Free Range egg remains to be critical with many egg processors unable to quote for new business.?
Right now, the markets are expected to keep rising as the demand increases in the run up to Easter.?
However there is some light at the end of this very long tunnel.?Figures for day-old pullet placings in the UK have now been released and for the last two months which shows a rise in chick numbers since August 2021. It’s a long way off getting the UK flock back to its former size.