French egg farmers smash 100,000 eggs in protest
French egg farmers have smashed 100,000 eggs in front of a tax office in Brittany in protest over low prices – and threatened to smash 100,000 a day until they improve.
The group of 20 farmers said this equated to 5% of Brittany’s daily production. They are calling on the government for a cut to national French egg production by 5%, to bring the market into balance.
Eggs were pushed from the back of a truck by angry producers and dumped on the pavement outside a local tax office in Carhaix, Brittany. One told French newspaper La Parisien that the eggs had no place on French soil, and the surplus should instead be shipped to developing countries.
Yves-Marie Beaudet, head of the egg section of a union that represents farmers in Brittany, told the AFP that producers were being paid €0.75 for a kilogram of eggs that cost €0.95.
These are the latest in a series of protests from French egg farmers who say investing in enriched cages has hit bottom lines hard, and the cost of raw feed materials is rising faster than the market price of eggs.
The UK’s colony egg market came into surplus earlier this year, with producers forced into early shed depopulation for caged birds as new colony units came on-stream.
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