Letter from Europe: Storm clouds gather for Europe's egg producers

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

As of 2012, a ban is due on battery cages for laying hens. But countries making the switch are facing imports from non-complying countries and others are lobbying for a delay

by NORMAN DUNN

The complications of changing farming policies within a 27-country common market are being underscored once again in the European Union (EU).

The bell rang for round one in this particular battle 11 years ago when the European parliament decided that battery cages for layers would be phased out before January 1, 2012.  The system to be stopped featured the "Eurocage" (550 square centimetres of floor per bird).

Even before 1999, Sweden (and non-EU member Switzerland) had decided to go it alone and ban the Eurocage. The Swedes replaced it with either on-floor barn systems or a larger "enriched cage" offering at least 750 square centimetres of floor space per bird and usually for small colonies of eight to 10 hens with nesting boxes, perches and litter area.

Austria also banned Eurocages as of 2008. And, in January of this year, all 38 million laying hens in Germany were out of Eurocages and into enriched cages or deep litter barns. Popular versions of enriched cages in Germany are the "small flock aviary" with room for 20 birds, or even larger ones for 60 layers.

Germany is the biggest consumer of eggs in the EU with a requirement for nearly 17 billion eggs a year. The national parliament's decision to pull out of battery cages before most of the rest of Europe resulted in a fair number of battery egg producers there deciding to call it a day rather than change over to a new system – a situation that played no small role in the country's self-sufficiency in eggs dropping from 74 per cent in 2002 to around 55 per cent now. The Netherlands is not only a neighbour, but also one of Europe's largest exporters of eggs and is naturally delighted to help fill this gap.

Now, Swedish farmers have already found to their cost that EU lawmakers had forgotten to install a safety net in the cage-banning legislation. It left the countries changing over to obviously more expensive non-cage systems wide open to the risk of losing their markets to cheaper imported cage eggs. An EU investigation has already calculated that eggs are 12 per cent more expensive to produce in barn systems and 20 per cent dearer from outdoor free-range systems, compared to those from Eurocage farms.

When Sweden did away with Eurocages, neighbour Finland was just one of the surrounding countries that lost no time in shipping cage eggs into Swedish shops.

Nowadays, however, the non-cage producers are protected from a very unlikely source. Aided by skilful welfare group campaigns, there's now hardly a supermarket chain in Germany that allows eggs from battery cages on its shelves – and the same goes for retailers in the Netherlands and Britain, too.

This is the change that is helping Dutch farmers to move smartly out of cage systems with around 65 per cent of the national flock now in barns and free-range, despite their government leaving Eurocages legal until January 2012.

But supermarkets have also managed to muddy the waters for even the farmers who've moved out of Eurocages, because most of these retail outlets have simply banned all cage-produced eggs from their shelves – not only those from Eurocages but also from the latest enriched versions with extra space.

This was a development almost unavoidable under present EU legislation, because the mandatory eggshell coding uses the number "3" for all cage systems. 

Of course, there's a huge market in Europe for non-table eggs in the baking and catering industries, where no one has to know where they come from. In Europe, this demand sucks up 25 per cent of egg production, according to the French Technical Institute for Poultry Production (ITAVI). This is seen as a major market for cage eggs, but one that also dramatically reduces the European market for non-cage ones.

Move further south and you really see the storm clouds gathering for the European egg industry's immediate future. France and Spain are the continent's two largest egg producers. Not only does France still have some 80 per cent of its 44 million layers in Eurocages, Spain (40 million layers) has around 95 per cent and it has actually increased production by 12 per cent since.  This expansion has almost all been in cages, because the number of eggs from non-cage systems in Spain has remained static.

Little wonder, then, that Mark Williams, CEO of the British Egg Industry Council, has just warned that about half the Eurocage housing in the EU will not be able to make the change before the 2012 deadline. In fact, Spain is already believed to be lobbying for at least one extra year while Poland, with only 16 per cent of large commercial flocks changed from Eurocage systems, wants until 2017.

In February, the EU Council of Agriculture rejected Poland's plea.

One thing is sure. There'll be a lot more similar requests coming soon as Europe's crazy egg policy tries to follow the EU regulations, or avoid them. BF

Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.