- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Summary
Finland has declined a U.S. request to export eggs amid a severe American shortage caused by bird flu.
The Finnish Poultry Association cited the lack of prior trade agreements and complex regulatory hurdles. Even if exports were possible, Finland’s limited egg production would not significantly impact the U.S. crisis.
Other European nations, including Sweden and Denmark, also face difficulties meeting U.S. demand, while Europe grapples with its own egg shortages.
The U.S. has turned to countries like Turkey and the Netherlands for supplies as bird flu remains a global issue.
This egg trade is insane, not a single euro country could help USA here simply because the us has a 340m+ population and that being said, it would take the entire eu support/ supply in order to meet the demand of the USA
It would take a sacrifice from EU countries to help an “ally” whose leadership will then threaten them, put more tariffs and make unfair deals when is your turn to request help.
Don’t know how it is in Europe, but here in Canada we have marketing boards to ensure that we’re always producing more food supply than needed. Because it’s kinda bad to have less food than needed, so we want to have a little bit of margin to ensure that doesn’t happen. BTW this is why food is a contentious trade issue with the US, we don’t want to be dependent on food production that has no safety margin.
Anyway, it’s very possible countries are producing more than they need and could supply the US with the excess. It may not meet all of the demand in the US, but it would help bring down the price a bit. Yes the prices wouldn’t be the same as it was before the Avian flu outbreaks, but it would be lower than it is now.
It’s something that could happen if Trump didn’t burn all the goodwill with all of the allies of the US. According to Trump “We don’t need anything they have.” So you will pay more for things, because Trump thinks you don’t need them.
We have the Common Agricultural Policy which has the quadruple goals of a) keeping the EU, on aggregate, self-reliant while b) simultaneously stabilising domestic production with subsidies because technically it would be cheaper for many producers to buy land abroad and then import, c) avoid crashing other region’s agricultural sector with hyper-efficient production, that’s why occasionally there’s production caps in place, and finally d) environmental and animal husbandry concerns. You can actually get money for letting land fall fallow and stuff, there’s all kinds of fine-grained subsidies when it comes to things like improving barns, it’s a whole shebang.
Just checked and eggs were never subject to production quota regulations, so (aside from product safety and animal husbandry rules) it’s a pretty open market. The pdf linked there shows that we’re massive exporters, notable exception is imports from Ukraine though those are nowhere close to massive. Eyeball-comparing egg production vs. population numbers and assuming every member states eats about as many eggs/capita as the other things look very well distributed, DE, FR, NL, PL, ES, and IT over-produce but it’s not like the smaller countries would have no capacity at all. Ukraine would actually fit in with that, also big country, also net exporter.
Overall we have exactly one shortfall: Protein crops. Mostly animal fodder in the form of South American soy, the rest, much smaller portion, is Canadian lentils. Not a desirable situation overall but one the one hand it’s not critical to feeding people (though there’d suddenly be much less meat) and South America really likes the income so the commission is in no hurry to address it. Canada just simply seems to be made for growing lentils, lots of right climate and soils for it, and that in wide flat areas.