In the past year, UTS students have likely noticed bare shelves where it hurts the most. Today, the average UTS student eats their mi goreng with no fried egg and their scrambles have a higher proportion of milk. Students have relied on eggs as a cheap source of nutrition for forever, but this lifestyle has become a lifestyle of rations. If we continue down this path, Night-Owl will soon be all broth and no noodle, and Bluebird Brekkies mere bacon and no egg. So, how did we get here?
According to Mandy McKeesick of The Guardian, Australia’s ongoing egg scarcity may be attributed to growing consumer demand for free range googies.
A 2024 outbreak of the H7N8 strain of Avian influenza, known on the streets as bird flu, has spawned a crippling egg shortage on Australian shelves. The domestic outbreak, which hit farms in NSW and Victoria, is notably different from the global situation. Overseas, the more aggressive H5N1 strain poses risk of human infection and widespread outbreaks. Australia remains the only continent free of the H5N1 strain. Yay, a win!
Farmers in Australia employ a strategy of containment and depopulation to address such outbreaks. In June 2024, Avian Influenza was detected in two farms in the Hawkesbury region. In response a total of 330,000 birds were culled (which is a polite way of saying murdered). The subsequent emergency order created restricted and controlled emergency zones, imposing prohibitions on movement and distribution of Avian Influenza carriers.
As of January 23rd 2025, the Biosecurity (Avian Influenza) Emergency Order (No 6) 2024 has been revoked and the outbreak successfully concluded. Another win! Yet, McKeesick suggests that this may not be the end of the story for Australian egg consumers. The real culprit: free-range farming.
She cites Greg Mills (qualification: he knows his eggs). Mills has worked as an industry adviser to the national poultry welfare code, as a university lecturer on egg production, as an on-farm consultant in free-range farm development, with the NSW Department of Primary Industries, and more. A brief glance at his linkedin profile compellingly validates his eggspertise.
So what does the messiah of egg production, Greg Mills, say about free-range farming? Put simply, if we continue on the slippery slope of the free-range egg takeover, the consumer's decision will be between expensive eggs or no eggs at all. Now as a vegan I must admit the decision is easy for me.
However, eggs remain a staple for many a budding mind. However, eggs remain a staple for many a budding mind. In my deep dive into egg academia, I found a study on tertiary students suggesting that higher egg consumption led to healthier body composition because of increased protein intake. Considering the general stereotypes of Uni students’ demonic diets, I could see the public health benefit of a couple of eggs, though chickpea flour may also do the trick.
So, for the sake of my UTS egg-eating cohort and my journalistic credibility I will entertain the concept of eggs, for now…
The crux of the theory is that the outdoor nature of free-range chickens increases susceptibility of contact with diseased wild-birds. This results in large-scale culling biosecurity measures, disrupting the delicate supply chain of eggs. Rebuilding the flocks is a long process, thus the current ongoing egg shortage despite disease elimination.
In a 2020 One Health article on Avian influenza in the Australian poultry industry, Angela Scott and her colleagues corroborate the findings of Mills. They found that a 25% change of chicken farms to free-range would increase the likelihood of an avian influenza outbreak by 6-7%.
So according to Greg Mills the choice is easy. For him, reintroduction of caged farming also does not seem to come at a cost. Greg Mills stated to the ABC that lower stocking density in sheds does not improve animal welfare. To me this seems like a pretty novel take, but let's give Greg the egg a chance.
The idea is this: every time an egg-laying chicken is bred, the male offspring is mulched as they lack utility. Because chickens in cages do not die as often, farmers are not compelled to breed another chicken to fill their place. This then saves the male cockerel that must be killed to breed the new lady chicken. Thus, welfare! I’m not sure about your definition of welfare, but to me it has more to do with quality of life. It has less to do with whether my confinement may deter someone from mulching hypothetical male babies.
To return to the point, there seems to be an overriding belief that factory farms breed wellness. However, in the journal ‘Appetite’, Kristof Dhont and his colleagues suggest that there is a wilful disregard of factory farming's culpability in zoonotic transmission of disease. Zoonotic transmission refers to where infectious disease is passed from animals to humans. Generally, this is a common occurrence in animal farms, and the starting point of most infectious diseases. Overcrowded conditions and production scale paired with feeding of antibiotics streamlines the spread of disease and of antimicrobial resistance.
So, if unlike Greg Mills we consider animal quality of life important and if factory farming may not necessarily safeguard against disease, what then is the decision for the every-day UTS egg consumer? I am not personally sure, but I’ll put forward some suggestions. The first is to accept expensive eggs. We can pursue the avenue of free-range farming and cross our fingers in hope that outbreaks are not as prolific as Mills suggests. Alternatively, we can impose some middle-ground regulations that reduce flock exposure to wild birds, treat water sources and restrict movement of people and equipment between farms. Or, we can all go vegan. Yet, this seems like an unlikely and unpopular event.
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