The Council of Agriculture (COA) is today to launch a subsidy program to boost chicken egg production amid a nationwide shortage, it said yesterday.
Since before the Lunar New Year holiday, the council reported egg shortages of about 1.2 million per day due to an avian flu outbreak, cold weather and rising operational costs.
Shortages this week could expand to 2 million eggs per day, it told a news conference in Taipei, adding that the situation is unlikely to improve soon.
Photo courtesy of Taichung City Government via CNA
Council officials yesterday afternoon met with egg retailers to discuss ways to address the problem.
“Our consensus was that products in the agricultural, fishing and livestock industries tend to be underpriced,” Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said. “An egg in Taiwan costs about NT$5, which is relatively cheap compared with other countries, but the cost of chicken feed has risen more than 26 percent since 2020.”
The Executive Yuan on Sunday announced that the government would waive a 5 percent business tax for importers of soybeans, wheat and corn to stabilize chicken feed prices, the council said.
Chen said that the council is also offering two subsidies to egg farmers to increase production.
Egg farmers are to be given NT$3 for every 600g of eggs produced, as well as NT$25 per egg-laying chicken to counter the effects of rising feed prices.
“We will implement the subsidy program until the end of this month to see if it is effective in raising egg production, or whether the program should continue or be adjusted,” he said.
The retail price for eggs is about NT$34.5 per 600g, the council said.
Taiwan is still short of 1.4 million to 2 million eggs per day, council data showed.
“We want to emphasize that the nation still produces about 21 million eggs per day and people can still buy them. We will try to supply the retail market with eggs previously set aside for processed egg products,” he said.
The council said that it has applied for emergency approval to import eggs from Australia, Japan and the US to stabilize the retail price.
Before the Lunar New Year holiday, the council increased the supply by 900,000 eggs per day by coordinating with processed food manufacturers.
It froze the retail price at egg production sites at NT$34.5 per 600g, while the wholesale egg price was set at NT$44 per 600g. The prices continued for more than one month.
Still, egg shelves in Pxmart, Carrefour and other large supermarket chains remain mostly empty because deliveries stopped over the holiday, industry representatives said.
“Although egg production continued during the holiday, egg distributors were off,” Taipei Egg Retailers’ Union chairman Kao Chuan-mo (高傳謨) told the Central News Agency. “Egg deliveries would gradually resume in the next few days, now that distributors are back to work, but egg production is estimated to be fewer than 20 million per day.”
Animal Husbandry Department Deputy Director Chiang Wen-chuan (江文全) said that the demand for eggs tends to drop 3 to 5 percent after the holiday compared with before the holiday.
Whether egg production rises depends on when temperatures begin to warm, Chiang said.
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