With the poultry sector across Europe in lockdown over the threat posed by continued bird flu outbreaks, current rules mean that many free-range egg and poultry meat producers could soon lose their free-range status.

Rules detailing what agricultural products can be labelled as free-range apply at an EU level, and farmers are calling for the European Commission to revise these rules in the wake of avian flu restrictions set by individual member states.

At present, free-range birds can be housed for up to 12 weeks before poultry meat and eggs have to be labelled as barn-reared as opposed to free-range.

It is estimated that approximately 80% of free-range birds across Europe are currently under mandatory housing restrictions due to the threat of bird flu.

Ireland

The requirement to house all birds was introduced for 30 days in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on 23 December and has since been extended to 16 March in NI and “until further notice” in the Republic. The current 12-week period for free range producers across Ireland expires on 17 March.

Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of European farm lobby group Copa and Cogeca, said that the exceptional circumstances mean that it cannot be acceptable that free-range producers could have to bear the cost of product being reclassification following investment in free-range facilities.

Solution

“The simple solution is for the European Commission to allow the 12 weeks to be extended across the EU for a short period to get past this time of heightened disease challenge,” Mark Williams, secretary general of egg industry body EUWEP said.

The proposal has been backed by other egg and poultry meat bodies, as well as representatives from the retail sector.

“We of course want consumers to be confident that they are getting the product that they are paying for, but applying rapidly the 12-week-in-house threshold as a trigger to downgrade free-range eggs is disproportionate in these exceptional circumstances,” Christian Verschueren from retail body EuroCommerce said.

Read more

Full coverage: bird flu

Bird flu: what is it and should I be worried?