Tesco is the latest supermarket to ration the amount of eggs customers can buy due to supply issues.
Tesco customers are now only allowed to buy three cartons of eggs after Asda and Lidl imposed limits last week.
The move comes as UK poultry farmers face rising costs for chicken feed and energy while also being hit by an outbreak of bird flu.
This has created a bottleneck in the supply of eggs to supermarket shelves.
Last week Tesco said it had good availability with no restrictions on purchases but was working with manufacturers to protect supplies.
Now it has introduced a rationing policy after Lidl decided to limit the number of egg cartons to three per customer.
Asda has set a limit of two boxes per customer, but other grocers such as Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have yet to take similar steps.
- Asda and Lidl restrict egg sales after supply problems
- Egg farmers under pressure as costs soar
Sainsbury’s has admitted it could run out of business on some lines and has sourced eggs from Italy, despite a previous commitment to only buy eggs from UK suppliers.
Meanwhile, Morrisons has previously said it has no major supply problems.
Like households, farmers have also been affected by sharply rising energy costs in recent months.
They’ve also had to shell out more for wheat, a key ingredient in chicken feed that has surged as a result of the Ukraine war, with both Russia and Ukraine producing about 30% of the world’s supply.
Along with rising costs, farmers have been hit by the country’s largest bird flu outbreak, which has resulted in millions of birds being killed or culled in the past 12 months.
Farmers have claimed that although the price of a dozen eggs in supermarkets has risen by around 45p since March, they have only received between 5p and 10p of that increase and are not getting a fair price.
Therese Coffey, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, previously said she was not concerned about the overall supply of eggs in the UK.
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