Shortly before Easter – Bird Flu: do we also get an egg crisis such as the US?

In short, the outbreak of bird flu in Austria did not cause a deep crisis in Austria. Because the chickens, unlike the United States, are not stored in “huge agricultural groups”, but in rural companies. There was therefore no scarcity such as the last in the United States, the vice president of the Upper Austria Chamber of Agriculture, Rosemarie Ferstl, recorded on Tuesday.

There are a total of 2492 laying hen companies throughout Austria. If the epidemic broke out among individuals, this does not result in dramatic bottlenecks that fail the failure of an agricultural group, the chairman of the Oberösterreich Poultreconomy, Gerold Sterer, explained in a press conference in Linz. In Austria, however, he already expects a sneaking shortage of the goods in Austria.

Several unfavorable factors play together
On the one hand, egg consumption has increased over the past five years, the consumption per head of the population has been 248 pieces per year. High construction costs, rising interest rates and the uncertain times would have led to the fact that the laying hens had only changed insignificantly in the upper Austria. Moreover, there was no corresponding price adjustment to the increased production costs. Sterrer mentioned two cents more each than the target for rural companies. For the most common in Austria, in 2024 with a good 56 percent, the grounds were kept, the share of free distance from free distance was almost 31 percent and biological free landing attitude.