A big story this recent Passover was the egg shortage, to which Dr. Asher Meir proposed a solution (“Israel’s planning in a topsy-turvy world,” The Jerusalem Post, April 19, 2020, p. 9): remove all government controls (quotas) so that free market forces can kill off the small, inefficient, unsanitary farms, thus leaving only the “efficient and sanitary modern farms [that] are able to ramp up production and provide sufficient supply in times of both normal and peak demand.”
Regarding the smaller farms, Meir claimed: “Small dairy [sic] farms are unusually vulnerable to avian pathogens.” The opposite is actually true; large farms are more vulnerable.
He then claimed that the 2006 avian flu wreaked havoc in Israeli poultry farms. In reality, while it caused economic damage, there was definitely no "havoc."
The avian flu infected only nine facilities, all of them large modern farms (six turkey farms, two broiler/breeder farms and one broiler farm, none of which have quotas).
While one can argue against the current egg-quota system, the arguments in the article as they relate to the recent Passover shortage were fallacious.
Here are the facts: Poultry farms in Israel produce, on average, six million eggs a day, a sufficient quantity for Israeli demand. Every year, demand increases in Tishrei and Nissan; the Hebrew months in which Sukkot and Passover occur.
Unlike what Meir suggests, there is no way to “ramp up production” for two non-consecutive months (they tried to tell the chickens to work overtime but they refused). Thus, built into the system is that Israel imports eggs during these two months, and this has always worked.
So why was there a shortage this year?
First, due to uncertainties caused by the pandemic there was hoarding; the same way that people hoarded toilet paper to create a shortage.
Second, there were several hundred thousand more people in the country this year than usual. Last year, approximately 750,000 Israelis went abroad for Passover while 405,000 tourists came to Israel. Assuming that both those numbers were close to zero this year, there were 345,000 more people in Israel for Passover this year than anticipated.
Still one might ask, what if one tried the free-market approach? That experiment has been done. In the open New York of the economically laissez-faire United States, the price of a dozen eggs shot up from $1.05 in the first week of March 2020 to $3.05 in the first week of April. The American egg industry solved a short-term egg shortage not by “ramping up production” but by nearly tripling the price!
Meir’s suggestion might not be wrong. Eight years ago, the Agriculture Ministry, for a number of reasons, recommended closing down the small egg-layer farms to build larger, more modern farms in their stead. This was turned down by a Knesset committee, mainly due to pressure from animal-rights organizations.
Thus, the egg shortage in Israel was real. However, it was caused by hoarding; a higher seasonal population than normal due to travel restrictions; a greater number of households than normal, each buying eggs; different buying patterns of households, hotels and other facilities this year; and other variables.
One thing is clear: The egg shortage had nothing to do with the egg-quota system.