| On Wednesday's newscast we told you about the inflation figure for July. It was down minus one percent - meaning, that the groceries you bought for 100 dollars in July of 2014, would cost 99 dollars in July of 2015. Now, anyone who shops at the market knows that isn't so - and that's because essentials like eggs and beef have gone up sharply. Eggs went up 17% and today we asked the Manager of the Belize Poultry Association, Orland Habet to explain the price spike and tell us when you can expect lower prices:..
Orland Habet, Manager - Belize Poultry Association
"The production of eggs actually went down because if you recall in January, BAHA had made a report that Spanish Lookout through a regular surveyance program flocks of hens were found to have Avian Influenza H5 which is a low pathogenic Avian Influenza. Belize had options of either depopulation and or also to do a vaccination program. We, along with BAHA and the Ministry of Agriculture opted to go the depopulation side instead of the vaccination, because it's more difficult, it costly and it takes a long time and we have to have a plan to get out of it. So, because of the depopulation, more than 86,000 birds were depopulated and of those, 70,000 were layer hens and some older hens, but most of them were also young pullets who just started to lay. So, the effects of the young pullets start laying isn't felt until 4-5 months later. Which is what we felt about a month and a half to two months ago. So the egg production went down and when you depopulate these birds, the birds take at least 5 months for a new flock to start production and when they start production which they just started about a month ago, the eggs start small and within two months they get to medium size and after 3 months they are regular normal size. So that actually caused decreased in production and so an increased in the price of eggs."
"If you watch the news, you would see that in the US for example, just this year they had Avian Influenza and the price of eggs actually doubled and in Mexico it quadrupled. In Belize it went up like 17%-18%. The production right now is almost back to normal. We believe that within two weeks it would be fully back to normal. The prices went up a little but, from the productive sector side, the problem sometimes is that we the industry cannot control the prices that the supermarket put on the retail. For example, a case of eggs which is 360 eggs is sold for about $87 per case, which comes out to $7.50 per egg flat and $3.10 per dozen. I just want to mention that eggs fluctuate in price throughout the year. During the Christmas time it may go up to $90 - $95 per case. But at time normally eggs would be selling like $76 - $78 per case. Right now it's at $87 per case."
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