Russia: Financial losses spur mass mortality and spark poultry welfare concerns
Poultry farmers in Russia are mass culling laying hens, sometimes using unconventional and inhumane methods. The profitability crisis in the egg industry has reportedly reached a boiling point, with most egg farms operating at a loss.
Several high-profile incidents of manmade mass mortality among laying hens have shocked Russian society over the past month. The first occurred at a farm in Krasnodar Krai, in the southern part of European Russia, where over 150,000 laying hens were left unfed as the company was no longer able to maintain operations due to massive accumulated debt. Veterinary officials discovered that, after being left without feed for several days, the desperate hens began to engage in cannibalistic behavior.
In another case, an unknown farmer in the Udmurtia Republic has left around 3,000 hens in the open field, also likely in an attempt to get rid of the flock.
Crisis reaches climax
Both cases illustrate a profound crisis the Russian egg industry has found itself in during the last several years. Most of the farms are currently operating at a loss, as the wholesale price of eggs reached Rub 2 ($0.025) per unit in June, more than twice the production cost, according to Ksenia Sumkova, deputy chairman of the Russian farmers’ association People’s Farmer. Although the price bounced back a little in July, it remains below the edge of profitability.
Since the beginning of the year, Russian egg production jumped by nearly 1 billion units, which has driven the market to oversupply, Galina Bobyleva, general director of the Russian Union of Poultry Farmers, told local state newspaper Izvestia.
Various factors
To prevent such situations from recurring, she suggested that the government should restructure the supply chain by encouraging wholesalers to enter into long-term agreements with medium- and small-scale egg farmers.
One of the factors for the oversupply is that the egg farms driven out of business by the outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza this year have been gradually put into operation, Elena Lazareva, general director of Tavros, a prominent egg manufacturer, stated.
Call for new animal welfare rules
In the meantime, the Russian environmental protection community has intensified its efforts to convince authorities to adopt strict animal welfare rules to prevent the cases that have recently occurred in the egg industry.
As revealed by Kirill Goryachev, a local animal welfare activist, agricultural animals are “the most unprotected” among all animals in Russia, and farmers are free “to treat them as garbage”. However, a new bill currently under development in cooperation with the Public Chamber, a consultancy body under the Russian government, is said to change this situation.
