Poultry stalwart takes Tesco boss to task over fair egg pricing

Poultry industry stalwart, Robert Thompson from Forfar made his mark on this year’s NFUS conference by taking a Tesco boss to task over the retailers’ role in the egg crisis – and then being honoured a few hours later with the annual Miskelly award for outstanding dedication and commitment to the sector.

Mr Thomson, who supplies poultry packaging and sundries from Tpak Ltd, Forfar, has spent months tackling retailers over their reluctance to pay a sustainable price and warned repeatedly if they didn’t that it would lead to an egg shortage – an issue he raised with Tesco’s egg and poultry manager, John Kirkpatrick, who addressed the meeting.

While supermarkets blamed the egg shortage on the high incidence of avian influenza (AI), Mr Thompson said retailers had failed to listen to warnings issued by the industry last spring.

In a sparky exchange Mr Thompson said: “We told you last year that producers were losing so much money they would not put hens back in.

“The problem is yours, the problem is not the producers or the packers.”

He added there had been no engagement from retailers to invitations to meet with the sector at industry events.

Mr Thompson said that egg producers wanted to see the Grocery Code Adjudicator put back in place “with a nice new set of dentures” and with both producers and packers on the committee, claiming that the current system – which he said saw retailers “marking their own homework” – simply didn’t work.

However, Mr Kirkpatrick maintained that feed costs and other inflationary pressures had played a role in the shortages.

He described a “perfect storm” including the economic repercussions of the war in Ukraine, the phasing out of colony produced eggs together with the surge in AI outbreaks

He said that an additional £27.5 million had been pumped into the industry, following discussions which had included the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA).

He said AI continued to represent a major threat to the poultry sector, and Stranraer poultry producer and chair of the BFREPA, James Baxter – who, in recent weeks, lost 192,000 birds to the disease – conceded that AI was a major issue.

And while he said he had been fortunate enough to have insurance against an outbreak this time round, it was unlikely that he would be able to afford future premiums. He called on the government to step in and ensure that the full economic impact suffered by producers in an outbreak was covered.

There are conflicting views over egg crisis causes.