Australia’s Egg Shortage Could Last Until 2028 Amid Bird Flu, High Demand & Supply Woes

Shoppers are being warned that egg shortages could continue for at least another three years.

The ABC is aware of a report commissioned by Australian Eggs flagging an expected shortfall of up to 500 million eggs by 2025 — before the bird flu outbreak further disrupted supply.

On top of already existing demand pressures, 10 per cent of the laying flock has been destroyed in line with biosecurity requirements, due to bird flu outbreaks across eastern Australia last year and a current disease cluster in north-east Victoria.

Eggs have now been in short supply for months as demand has skyrocketed, and Woolworths, Coles and IGA have placed purchasing limits of two cartons in a number of states.

Boyd Carmody from Creswick Open Range Eggs, who runs about 160 birds per hectare, said not all of the proceeds from supermarket price rises were being filtered back to farmers, and consumers should brace for more disease outbreaks disrupting supply.

“I reckon the egg market will be tight up until at least spring 2028,”

he said.

“We haven’t even gotten over the 2024 outbreak. Those farms aren’t back in production.

“Some of them are still pushed up into a big pile and will need to be rebuilt — it’s a problem that’s going to be with us for a while.”

The ABC has spoken to multiple industry sources who said that due to the nature of the market and the constant threat of disease outbreaks, low supply until 2028 was a strong possibility. 

Diet demands

Experts say it is not just bird flu that’s causing chaos in the supply chain.

Economist and commodity analyst firm Episode 3, Matt Dalgleish, compiled a report for the nation’s peak egg industry body Australian Eggs.

He said changing consumer habits were forecast to drive a market shortage of between 200–500 million eggs by 2025, and that was before avian influenza hit.

“Now that we’ve got bird flu and it’s the second time around and it’s significantly impacted the number of layers, it’s exacerbated the problem,” he said.

Mr Dalgleish said as the cost of living ate into households wallets, people were turning to eggs as a more affordable source of protein.

“People do switch out of more expensive meats and into eggs, so you get a general increase in demand,” he said.

“And then coming off the back off COVID and some of the disruptions there, high feed-grain costs because of the Ukrainian invasion from Russia … there are several [influencing] factors on the supply and demand sides.

“We were already setting the stage for a shortage of eggs anyway, given how demand was growing and supply, to a degree, was contracting.”

In addition to cost-of-living pressures, Mr Dalgleish said demand for eggs was also increasing as more people switched to vegetarian or high protein diets and the nation’s population increased.

“There have been some changes through the last decade in terms of dietary and cultural preference and changes to the dynamics of demographics coming into the country,” he said.

“There are certain communities that favour eggs as a more common part for their weekly meals — that’s also added to that growth in demand, absolutely.”

Farmers increasing prices

Mr Carmody said the price of eggs would continue to rise until supply caught up with demand.

“I have to put prices up next week but this was planned before the current outbreak — we’ve had a lot of price pressure from feed, cartons, transport and the price of hens has gone up,” he said.

“The cost of insurance shot up about 12 per cent and so we’ve needed to put our prices up about eight per cent.

“Next week they’ll go from $10–12 a dozen to $11–13 a dozen, and looking at the way everything is going there will probably be a similar price rise in June.”

Free range egg prices in Australia have increased by 25 per cent since 2010.

Mr Dalgleish agreed egg prices would remain high for a while longer.

“Over the last couple of years we’ve already seen a 30 per cent increase in the price of caged eggs,” he said.

“And if you look at the quarter-to-quarter consumer price index figures, as far back as I can remember it’s eggs that have been the leader in terms of inflationary pressures.

“I can’t see it changing the near term and certainly not while bird flu is present and we’re still struggling to build back those numbers of laying hens.”

Adding further uncertainty to the future of the egg market, the Victorian government has committed to phasing out the current caged egg industry by 2036, but has not given farmers a road map for the phase out.

Source: www.abc.net.au