Egg farmer Julie Anderson sorts her produce. - File

The price of locally produced eggs is to go up. This is due to escalating costs of animal feed and new regulations. The Bureau of Standards introduced regulations on January 1 this year regarding the grading, packaging, labelling and transportation of 'cool products'.

At present, the farm-gate price of eggs is between $150 and $160 per dozen, which is 40 per cent cheaper than imported eggs from the United States.

During a press conference at the Bureau of Standards offices in St. Andrew on Thursday, vice-president of the Jamaica Egg Farmers' Association, Roy Baker, said there will be at least a 12 to 15 per cent increase in the price of eggs, due mainly to a recent feed-price increase and operational costs to be incurred with the acquisition of equipment to adhere to the new regulations.

Whereas a number of the bigger egg farmers already have grading and packaging equipment, most of the island's farmers will now have to purchase refrigerated trucks to ensure that the eggs remained cool from the farm to the consumer, in keeping with the new standards, said Barker.

Uniform size

Under the new Bureau of Standards regulations, all eggs to be sold in the retail trade will be of uniform size and will be packaged and clearly labelled based on their grade. However, those eggs which do not conform to the size and shell specifications of the regulation standards will be sold to the liquid egg plant in Montego Bay for processing as pasteurised eggs.