Australia’s egg shortage: why are consumers still scrambling six months after the bird flu outbreaks?​on January 30, 2025 at 2:00 pm

Why are egg shelves sometimes bare?

The low supply of eggs in some areas is partly due to a series of outbreaks of a type of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) or bird flu last year.

In mid-2024, several strains of H7 HPAI were detected at 16 premises in south-eastern Australia – eight in Victoria, six in New South Wales and two in the Australian Capital Territory. Of these, 11 were commercial poultry farms.

While the outbreaks have been contained, Australia takes a zero-tolerance approach to HPAI. The viral illness can be fatal and spread between wild birds and farmed poultry. The protocol after any reported infection is the euthanasia of all birds on a farm. The federal government estimates 1.8 million birds were killed last year.

This resulted in fewer hens and reduced the total volume of egg production. Hospitality operators and retailers have been affected over the past six months and some supermarket shelves remain bare.

Eggs have also become more expensive. The price of eggs was inflated by 11.2 per cent in the last three months of 2024, data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed. Apart from lamb and goat meat, eggs recorded the highest price increase of any food category recorded by the ABS.

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Earlier this month, Egg Farmers of Australia (EFA) issued a statement acknowledging that the shortage had continued, which it attributed to the HPAI outbreak, among other factors.

The peak body for the industry said the “majority of farms” affected by the disease have now been restocked and it expected the supply of eggs to begin returning to normal.

The EFA’s chief executive, Melinda Hashimoto, declined to comment further when contacted by Guardian Australia last week as she said the peak body did not want its “positive Australia Day story” to be “overshadowed” by one about supply issues. The other egg industry peak body – Australian Eggs – did not respond to requests for comment.

What other factors are contributing to the shortage?

The EFA also cited high seasonal demand and caged eggs being phased out as contributing factors.

It said the industry was “facing a transitional period” as some farms shifted from cage egg production to barn-laid or free-range, which it said was also affecting supply due to the need to buy and upgrade infrastructure.

In 2023, Australia’s agriculture ministers made a commitment to ban cage eggs by 2036 in accordance with the new national animal welfare standards and guidelines for poultry that had been updated in 2022. The changes were brought in after decades of consumer pressure but there was opposition from some parts of the industry.

The final timeframe was to be set by individual states and territories after consultation with the industry.

Coles and Woolworths had committed to phasing out caged eggs by the beginning of 2025 but the supermarkets have pushed back the deadline.

Woolworths updated its animal welfare policy to say it was “continuing our work towards” using only cage-free eggs as an ingredient in its own brand products and was “committed to all vendor branded whole shell eggs we sell being cage free” by the end of 2025.

Coles has said it is will phase out all caged eggs nationally in 2025. A spokesperson for the supermarket said this was in line with the retail industry’s target.

“All Coles own-brand shell eggs sold nationally have been cage-free since 2013,” they said. “We have already achieved a cage-free status for branded shell eggs in Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia.”

How are supermarkets managing the supply issues?

In some states, both Woolworths and Coles continue to have limits on the number of cartons of eggs you can buy at a time, which have been in place since July last year.

Woolworths has a two-pack purchase limit on eggs in all states except Western Australia. It says a majority of its customers only buy one carton of eggs a shop anyway.

A Woolworths spokesperson said its supply was “stable” but it would “unfortunately … take a while longer to rebuild” the number of laying hens in Australia after the HPAI outbreak.

“The usual higher demand for eggs over Christmas and the new year’s period put an additional short-term strain on the availability of eggs across all retailers,” they said.

“Our egg supply has continued to improve and we are working closely with our suppliers to source as many eggs as possible.”

Coles is in a similar position.

“Following the avian influenza outbreaks last year, we have been consulting with our suppliers, industry bodies and government to understand the implications and long-term impacts of the outbreaks,” a spokesperson for the supermarket said.

“We will continue to work closely with impacted suppliers to support their recovery.”

Aldi declined to comment. The discount supermarket has experienced a small decrease in the supply of eggs but it has not imposed a limit on the number of cartons customers can buy.

Will the situation resolve anytime soon?

The Victorian Farmers Federation general manager of policy and advocacy, Charles Everist, says while last year’s HPAI protocols have been formally lifted the egg shortage won’t resolve until later this year.

“There is a lag that comes with that because the farms need to be repopulated and that doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “The shortages we’re seeing could continue for the next six months.”

Everist says the industry is struggling to meet demand and is also having to tackle additional biosecurity measures with the H5N1 strain of bird flu “on our doorstep”. Variants of this strain of the virus have been detected in humans overseas.

The H5 strains of bird flu are “high pathogenicity”, which means they are considered more likely to kill birds infected by them.

Australia has had no reported outbreaks of the H5N1 strain, although cases have escalated since 2022 overseas including in England and the US.

However, as a spokesperson for the federal agriculture department says: “There is no way to prevent new strains of bird flu viruses entering Australia with wild birds, or transmission between wild birds.”

They said the government has invested more than $100m to strengthen surveillance and response measures if there is a H5 bird flu outbreak here.

Just this week, the World Organisation for Animal Health confirmed the first outbreak of a novel strain – H5N9 – in poultry had been detected on a duck farm in California.