By Jemima Wittich
Britain’s supermarket shoppers are left confused and eggless due to a recent shortage. Though it is not clear as to why there are no eggs on our shelves, here is what we know so far.
Avian influenza is sweeping British farms by storm and has already claimed millions of feathered lives. Avian flu symptoms set in, usually making the birds blind, and killing them within 48 hours of when symptoms first started.
This type of bird flu was confirmed to be in commercial poultry yesterday. It is unclear as to whether this has been the direct cause of the egg shortage as it has been confirmed so recently. Though supermarkets are keeping fairly quiet about these shortages, they are backing up the claims that the shortages are occurring due to avian influenza.
Though this seems entirely credible, some people are questioning the legitimacy of these claims. Ioan Humphreys, or @ThatWelshFarmer took to Twitter to tell his side of the story. In his 2-minute video, he said that the supermarkets are exaggerating their claims of avian influenza causing the egg shortage, and that in reality, the real reason ‘is because the supermarkets won’t pay the farmers for the eggs’. He explains how where the ‘supermarkets have upped the price for… the consumer’, they ‘have not filtered down that price increase’. Where farmers are having to pay more to produce eggs, they are not being compensated by the supermarkets.
