Supermarket retailers in South Africa on Thursday announced that they were contending with an egg shortage resulting from a significant outbreak of bird flu.
The outbreak has led to empty shelves in stores across the country over the past few weeks.
Grocery store chains have indicated that they had to raise prices and implement egg rationing due to the disease, which has resulted in the loss of millions of chickens since April, affecting producers.
“We have implemented a limit on whole egg purchases in all… stores and online to 6 eggs per customer,” retailer Woolworths said.
The company is collaborating with its farmers to expedite the return of a consistent supply.
On Thursday morning, in an upscale Johannesburg suburb, only two isolated six-egg cartons remained on the shelves of one of the retailer’s stores.
Shoprite, another prominent supermarket chain, informed media that it had also been impacted by the egg shortage.
“We continue to work closely with our egg suppliers, securing as much stock as possible and utilising our supply chain to transport it to regions experiencing shortages,” it said.
South Africa, one of the prominent poultry producers in the region, documented its initial bird flu cases on commercial farms in April, as reported by an industry association.
In certain stores, prices have doubled, affecting cafés, restaurants, and households.
“(The) cost of eggs has risen to extreme levels,” said Blessing Bomani, a manager at Coco Safar, a small French-style café in Johannesburg.
“It’s affecting our business because we can’t just hike up our prices overnight… our suppliers don’t have eggs and when we go to the supermarkets, they tell us we can only buy one crate of eggs, which is nothing for us”.
In the previous month, the South African Poultry Association (SAPA) disclosed that the country was grappling with two distinct strains of the virus, namely the well-known H5N1 and a novel strain recognized as H7N6.
While the virus has historically been limited to seasonal outbreaks, since 2021, cases have surfaced throughout the year and across the world. Experts assert that this constitutes the most extensive outbreak ever witnessed.
According to SAPA, the incidence of avian flu cases in South Africa for this year has surpassed the numbers seen in any year since the initial outbreaks were documented in commercial farms in 2017.
