Egg demand drops by 80 per cent in 2 days

Consumers are shunning eggs as much as chicken, as demand has dropped by more than 80 per cent over the last two days.

Kajal Dutta, president of Kolkata Egg Merchant Association, said, "The demand for eggs has been very low since the outbreak of bird flu. Against a daily sale of 20-22 lakh eggs per day, today we sold only 4-5 lakh egss, which is hurting the poultry owners very badly," he said.

The wholesale prices have dropped from nearly Rs 2 per egg to Re 1.20 in the last two days.

The demand for eggs and chicken appear to be moving in tandem. The prevailing price of 1kg chicken has tumbled to Rs 40 from nearly Rs 100 a week ago.

"More than 90 per cent of eggs which come to Kolkata are from Andhra Pradesh, still there is panic among people due to dissemination of wrong information from a section of the media. Eggs from the bird flu-affected areas generally do not come to Kolkata, though they go to some parts of north India, " said Dutta.

With the egg merchants facing an oversupply situation, the leftover stock in the last two days had been sent to cold storages and fresh consignments of eggs from other states were cancelled, said Dutta.

He also met Anisur Rahman, animal husbandry minister of West Bengal today to discuss the issue of low demand of poultry products in Kolkata.

However, bakery owners stand to gain from low egg prices, as the demand for bakery products have remained unaltered since the bird flu outbreak.

Along with this, there has been a 30 per cent rise in the demand for fish over the last two days, said Adhir Biswas, president, Sealdah Fish Merchant Association.

"There is definitely a rise in the demand for fish since the outbreak of bird flu, resulting in price rise. The supply of sea fish has declined particularly over the last few days, which has fuelled the price rise," Biswas said.

The culling of chickens continued on Tuesday, as the H5N1 virus of bird flu was found among poultry in Malda. The government has now raised the culling target to two million, with nearly 150,000 poultry culled so far.

The outbreak has so far affected seven districts in West Bengal -- Birbhum, Murshidabad, south Dinajpur, Burdwan, Nadia, Bankura and Malda.