New egg farming regulations coming into effect next month, and high bird-feed costs are causing a massive increase in price and egg rationing. According to Laurie Horsfall of Hawkes Bay Eggs, the supply of eggs will likely be limited over the next months.  There is a shortage, we won’t run out of eggs, but it’s going to be tight for quite a while. Farmers are already rationing eggs and expect the shortfall to alleviate in February and March of next year, but it will remain tight. It happens at a time when the cost of eggs has soared.  Since March 2022, the average supermarket shelf price for a dozen eggs has increased by 26%.

He claimed that increased feed costs, which account for 70% of their expenses, are mostly to blame for the price increase.  Horsfall assured consumers that egg prices should remain stable over the upcoming few months, but he also issued a warning that they might rise more in the future. In December, new cage-housing regulations go into effect, which would further worsen egg scarcity and be extremely expensive for farmers.

Farmers have cautioned that because of the restrictions, there would be fewer eggs available on the market as flock sizes decline. Many people may close their businesses as a result of the higher costs associated with enforcing these regulations. By the end of December, conventional battery cages will no longer be lawful due to the law change, which mandates that hens have more space. Hens must be raised in a colony, barn according to the law. When the new regulations were announced in 2012, 84% of producers were using the battery cage method, allowing them a decade to implement the costly modifications. Switching from standard caged eggs to a colony cage system, which is an expanded, indoor enclosure that allows hens freedom of movement, took him 15 years and $2.5 million in expenditure.

Colony cages continue to violate New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act 1999, according to SAFE NZ’s website. The animal rights organization claimed that because the chickens are tacked to the ceiling in rows inside climate-controlled, windowless enclosures, the colony cages do not allow them to display their natural behavior. Horsfall asserted that the majority of hens raised in a free-range system never venture outside. Major New Zealand supermarkets have promised to stop selling caged eggs by 2027.