Free range eggs could run out in March as farmers forced to keep birds indoors, MP warns

Britain could run out of free-range eggs by March as the poultry industry battles its way through the worst avian flu on record, an MP warned.

On 7 November, the government ordered all birds in England and Wales to be kept indoors and told farmers to follow stringent biosecurity measures to protect the animals from the disease.

The 16-week grace period where eggs can still be claimed to be free range, even if they are kept inside, will expire on 27 February. From this day, free-range egg sellers will then have to label their eggs as barn eggs.

Cat Smith, a Labour MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, speaking at a debate on the issue in the House of Commons, said: "It's likely that we will breach that 16-week grace period at the moment because of the state of the influenza outbreak and I'm very aware a lot of producers are now going to have additional costs in terms of rebranding their products which will no longer be free range at the end of this process."

Some supermarkets have taken to rationing boxes of eggs amid the bird flu outbreak and supply chain issues.

Tesco, Aldi, and Lidl have all placed limits on the number of boxes customers can purchase at a time, as a way to tackle the egg shortage.

In the lead-up to Christmas, shoppers have also been warned of a shortage of British free-range turkeys with half already dead due to bird flu.

Half of the free-range turkeys produced for Christmas in the UK have already been killed in the bird flu epidemic, British Poultry Council chief executive Richard Griffiths told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee yesterday.

Mr Griffiths said: “The usual amount of free-range birds grown for Christmas is around 1.2 to 1.3 million. We have seen around 600,000 of those free-range birds being directly affected.”

About 9 million birds were produced for Christmas in the UK, but around a million had been culled or died from bird flu, he said.

The bird flu outbreak began in October of last year and since then, there have been 257 confirmed cases, with 137 of those cases noted since 1 October.