CHARLES KONG SOO

Caveat emp­tor is a Latin term that means let the buy­er be­ware.

Su­per­mar­kets some­times have band­ed of­fers on prod­ucts at a re­duced cost, but there is a catch; the com­mod­i­ty may be close to the ex­piry date.

Con­sumers might pat them­selves on the back for snap­ping up one of the lat­est mod­el smart­phones at a fan­tas­tic price, on­ly to have the cell­phone man­u­fac­tur­er un­leash its newest up­grad­ed it­er­a­tion of its flag­ship mod­el, like­wise car and ap­pli­ance man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The cell­phone with a low price tag, how­ev­er, may come with a high ra­di­a­tion lev­el.

Right af­ter Di­vali, head­ing in­to the Christ­mas sea­son, the sale of eggs in­creas­es ex­po­nen­tial­ly. Eggs are used to make ponche-de-Creme, T&T’s rum for­ti­fied po­tent an­swer to eggnog, cakes such as black cake, sponge cake, bread, sweet bread, ham and eggs and one of the coun­try’s pop­u­lar com­fort food, mac­a­roni pie.

An egg war is hatch­ing in T&T and qui­et­ly be­ing waged among im­porters and lo­cal egg farm­ers for mar­ket dom­i­nance and con­sumers’ pock­ets.

Su­per­mar­kets are scram­bling to re­plen­ish their shelves with im­port­ed eggs that sell for $14.99 for a dozen medi­um eggs and $15.99 for a dozen large eggs. At one point the Amer­i­can Sunups brand of eggs was sell­ing as low as $12.99 or two dozens for $20. Trinida­di­ans love a bar­gain and go for the im­port­ed eggs for the cheap price, al­though they are small­er than the lo­cal farm­ers’ eggs. Is there a catch?

Vice pres­i­dent and sec­re­tary of The As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Ta­ble Egg Pro­duc­ers (ATT­TEP) Den­nis Shawn Ram­s­ingh said, “The US has a sur­plus of eggs, the im­porters are sourc­ing them very cheap, its tan­ta­mount to dump­ing.

“I raised the is­sue on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the smug­gling of eggs hid­den among pro­duce in­to the coun­try on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. They’re sup­posed to pay du­ties once eggs are com­ing from the US, they’re du­ty-free if they’re com­ing from the Caribbean be­cause of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) arrange­ment. The ques­tion: are the du­ties be­ing paid?

“There is usu­al­ly a slight short­age of eggs mid-year on the mar­ket and busi­ness­men see fit to im­port eggs to make up the short­fall. Lo­cal egg farm­ers would usu­al­ly change their flocks be­tween May and June which would low­er their pro­duc­tion in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the re­place­ment of new high pro­duc­ing egg-lay­ing chick­ens.”

He said that ex­tra pro­duc­tion was ramped up be­cause of the ex­tra de­mand from Oc­to­ber go­ing in­to Christ­mas when three times the amount of eggs are need­ed.

Ram­s­ingh said the im­porters nev­er sat down and planned with the egg farm­ers on how many eggs they need­ed to im­port.

He said the im­porters be­lieved that they were al­ready en­trenched in the mar­ket and con­tin­ued to im­port and sell their quan­ti­ty of eggs, cou­pled with the farm­ers im­port­ing their egg-lay­ing birds to in­crease egg pro­duc­tion com­pound­ed the sit­u­a­tion.

Ram­s­ingh said the farm­ers’ cost of pro­duc­tion is very high, even if they pur­chased their sup­plies from lo­cal busi­ness­es, most of the prod­ucts orig­i­nat­ed from over­seas.

He said lo­cal pro­duc­ers housed over 500,000 birds ef­fi­cient­ly pro­duc­ing 75 to 85 per cent of eggs dai­ly.

Ram­s­ingh said man­age­ment strate­gies en­abled farm­ers to pro­duce high­er lev­els dur­ing the high­er de­mand pe­ri­ods; that is new­er flocks pro­duce high­er vol­umes as well as ad­di­tion­al hous­ing and stor­age to fa­cil­i­tate de­mands.

A lo­cal egg pro­duc­er said the im­por­ta­tion of for­eign eggs to T&T af­fect­ed the lo­cal egg farm­ers; lo­cal egg farm­ing was not sub­sidised by the Gov­ern­ment.

He said the ap­prox­i­mate cost to bring a fresh egg to the su­per­mar­ket shelf was $1.05.

The source said lo­cal farm­ers bore this cost and were bare­ly able to main­tain a prof­itable busi­ness when there was a glut of for­eign eggs com­ing in at a cheap­er price from the US, where farm­ers were sub­sidised.

He said by im­port­ing for­eign eggs con­sumers sup­port­ed US farm­ers and ne­glect­ed lo­cal farm­ers.

Re­gard­ing the qual­i­ty of prod­uct, the source said eggs pro­duced lo­cal­ly in T&T were pack­aged and sent out to the su­per­mar­ket with­in days of be­ing laid.

He said lo­cal farm­ers were able to pro­vide con­sumers with the fresh­est eggs that were of the high­est qual­i­ty, safe for con­sump­tion and with a shelf life of min­i­mum one month once re­frig­er­at­ed.

The source said eggs pro­duced in the US and shipped to T&T spent a fair amount of time in tran­sit, some­times two months, be­fore it reached su­per­mar­ket shelves.

He said the fresh­ness of the im­port­ed eggs was ques­tion­able and the dan­gers of sal­mo­nel­la poi­son­ing should be con­sid­ered when con­sum­ing these eggs.

An­oth­er egg farmer said su­per­mar­kets who con­tin­ued to sup­port the im­por­ta­tion of eggs at the ex­pense of hard-work­ing farm­ers showed at the end of the day all that re­al­ly mat­tered to them was prof­its, as this al­lowed them to un­der­sell the su­per­mar­kets who sup­port­ed lo­cal farm­ers.

He said a su­per­mar­ket will rather put im­port­ed eggs on its shelves in­stead of lo­cal eggs and want lo­cals to sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment.

The farmer queried where the im­porters were get­ting their for­eign ex­change from when av­er­age cit­i­zens com­plained about the in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess forex.

He said the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat need­ed to get in­volved and stop this from tak­ing place and su­per­mar­ket own­ers al­so as they were the first to com­plain when there were no eggs on the mar­ket but were fa­cil­i­tat­ing the demise of the lo­cal egg in­dus­try.

The farmer said Ramb­harat re­cent­ly talked about chick­en be­ing dumped in T&T and it may not be safe, like­wise with the eggs be­ing im­port­ed.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion said he had more than 100 peo­ple em­ployed on his farm, al­most 50 per cent were sin­gle moth­ers and de­pend­ed on the farm for em­ploy­ment.

He said on­ly one or two peo­ple were em­ployed by the im­porters to mar­ket their eggs.

The farmer said this had al­ready pro­duced a neg­a­tive im­pact and a domi­no ef­fect in the lo­cal egg in­dus­try and jobs.

He said be­sides his farm, peo­ple work­ing in poul­try de­pots, ven­dors, en­tre­pre­neurs buy­ing from farms and sell­ing in the mar­ket, par­lours and small­er es­tab­lish­ments were al­so af­fect­ed.

One of the egg im­porters/dis­trib­u­tors con­tact­ed did not re­turn Guardian Me­dia’s calls or re­spond on its Face­book page.