October 15, 2003

EU Responds to Increasing Demand For Egg Washing

The growth of alternative egg production systems makes it not a surprise to find that the EU Commission is taking another look at egg washing and has asked the European Food Safety Authority to prepare a comprehensive scientific report by the end of 2005.

UK remains an exception to the rest of the world in not allowing Class A eggs to be washed. On the other hand the need for washing is growing more here than anywhere else as the number of hens in free range and barn systems has risen sharply from 10m in 1991 to 39m in 2002.

This represents a share of 14% of the EU flock now compared with only 3% 10 years ago.

The main countries where this has happened are UK, Austria, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands with over 20% of their layers in alternative systems.

Only in Spain, Greece and Portugal have they stuck rigidly to virtually 100% cages.

The transfer from cages appears to have done little for egg consumption overall which has gone up by five eggs per head on average from 217-222 over the past decade with fluctuations in individual countries.

But this hides another change to the use of more products rather than shell eggs, now accounting for about 20% and forecast to reach 30% in another decade.

Value has got a boost from alternative eggs and so have retail margins, which are reported to show much greater differences than production costs.

Data supplied to the Commission by the EUWEP expert group showed that barn eggs cost 60% more at retail, free range 95% and organic 150% compared with cage.