Brazil recorded a gigantic egg production in 2022.
Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) show that the national industry’s supply has broken annual records since the agency’s records began in 1997.
Last year, Brazil reached the production of 48 billion eggs.
According to the survey conducted by Revista Oeste with IBGE figures, the national industry keeps about 180 million laying hens for egg production.
On average, each hen lays around 270 eggs yearly.
Almost all of them are consumed in the domestic market.
Thus, the availability per inhabitant in Brazil is about 233 eggs per year.
But it is worth remembering that part of this does not reach the final consumer as packages in supermarkets.
Several food industries use eggs as raw material or input.
The product mix is extensive: cooking pasta (including noodles), mayonnaise, cakes, and various other items sold nationwide.
EGG PRODUCTION UNDER THREAT
This production chain, however, is on alert.
Farmers in Brazil are trying to protect their gigantic egg production from a disease that has already wreaked havoc in other countries: avian influenza.
The lack of safe treatment and the high transmissibility mean that contaminations always result in the death of birds.
And as a safety measure to contain the spread of avian influenza, other specimens that have had direct or indirect contact with the sick animal are also exterminated.
Thus, one contaminated chicken in a shed leads to the slaughter of all the others in the same place.
In this way, the number of deaths on a farm can run into the millions.
THE DANGER IS IN THE AIR
Wild birds are the most significant vector for spreading the disease in commercial farms.
For this reason, the effort to prevent the spread is mainly to avoid contact with wild specimens with domestic ones.
“We reinforce the need for daily checks on the integrity of the aviary screens, thus preventing free-living birds from having contact with housed birds,” warned the Secretary of Agriculture and Supply of the State of São Paulo.
“Keep fruit trees out of the nuclei because they can attract wild birds. Keep the internal area of the poultry nucleus with low vegetation and no water accumulation, especially in this rainy period.”
With information from Revista Oeste