Friday, August 9, 2013

Egg Strike!!!

In France, a bunch of masked farmers have attacked local shops and smashed the eggs because the prices are too low:

Masked poultry farmers went on a mass 'egging' spree in anger at low prices.

The furious protesting French farmers threw 100,000 eggs out of the back of supermarket trucks in Cotes d’Armor, Brittany, on Tuesday night.

Then they smashed up pallets with another 100,000 eggs outside a tax office in the town of Carhaiz.

And they are threatening to smash an extra 100,000 a day until Sunday or their protest will become "more radical".

One shopkeeper said: “The mess and the smell is dreadful, but they are making their point.”

Their outrage is over an EU directive to protect the well-being of hens, but which they say has slashed profits.

The rules have sent production costs soaring, but the price of eggs has not risen as a result, farmers claim.

I'm not an egg farmer, but I think the egg farmers here should be targeting the EU, not the grocery stores who sell their eggs. Here's a thought: if your production costs have gone up, maybe you should raise the prices of your eggs. The grocery stores have an incentive to sell them and the will raise their own prices to meet their rise in costs.

Of course, that may not be how it works. Maybe the farmers send their eggs to the stores and the store owners send them money once the eggs are sold. In any case, the true problem lies with the EU dictating to farmers how they should run their farms. Because some pencil pusher in an office that mimics the tower of Babel knows better than a farmer who actually works with the animals.