Supplies of eggs from local farmers for the holiday season reached 1.3 million dozen over the two-month period ending December.

This is according to Mark Campbell, president of the Jamaica Egg Farmers' Association, who said the industry had implemented strategies to meet the demands for the current season immediately following Hurricane Dean, by putting 150,000 replacement pullets into the system to boost production levels.

"In addition, we increased our delivery schedule to ensure daily supplies of fresh eggs to the wholesalers and retailers over the period," Campbell noted.

He pointed out that a number of the island's 2,000 egg farmers had lost birds during the hurricane, at a time when they would have been preparing to build inventory to meet the usually high-demand period. With this in mind, the association also included among its strategies a decision to import eggs as a contingency plan. To this end, the Ministry of Agriculture granted permission for his group to bring into the island eggs from the United States for the current season.

Import shortages

However, Campbell said, because of the shortage of eggs in the United States, his association was only able to source 24,000 dozen at prices that were well above those of locally produced eggs.

According to Campbell, the shortage of eggs in the United States has resulted from a number of challenges being faced by those farmers, chief of which has been the unprecedented spiralling costs of fuel and feed on the world market. In addition, animal rights activists have brought pressure to bear on the U.S. egg industry for them to reduce the number of hens placed in a cage. As a result, the number of layers in the U.S. had been reduced by 38 million this year over the number in 2006.

In fact, Campbell said the retail price of eggs on the U.S. market had moved from US$0.79 per dozen last year to between US$2.25 and US$2.49 per dozen for white eggs this year, with brown eggs commanding an additional price of between 15 US cents and 20 US cents per dozen.