Egg farmers delay further protests

EGG producers left a meeting with Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll empty-handed after failing to win any significant moves to help their fight for higher egg prices.

Producers in Brittany, which have 20 million hens producing 40% of France’s eggs, have destroyed hundreds of thousands of eggs in public demonstrations over the past week after market prices collapsed.

They say they have invested heavily to meet new European norms on cage sizes and hen welfare but are now losing out to tumbling prices which come after a serious increase in the cost of grain and corn feed. Some say they are selling eggs at €4.30 per 100 when the production cost is around €7.

Mr Le Foll said the government had no legal way of forcing a change in market prices – unlike in milk and wine – but called on supermarkets to stop “exploiting this difficult time to maintain pressure on prices”.

He said he would arrange for help for producers in difficulty and the Brittany prefect would look at technical measures to reduce production - by increasing the space between batches of hens – and also looking at increasing exports.

Farmers said they would hold off on further action for two weeks to see if market prices rose.

Poverty charity Secours Populaire has already attacked the farmers for destroying more than a million eggs in their protest and said that hungry French people would have welcomed them.

And Laurent Pinatel, of the Confédération Paysanne, told Libération that the egg producers only had themselves to blame as they had “profited from the change to European norms to increase their production capability by 30-50%” when prices were rising to record levels last year.

Protesters smash 100,000 eggs

Screengrab: Le Phare Ouest