Regulation of egg production moves ahead
(CNS): The National Egg Strategy (NEST), which has been in development for two years and is designed to create a certified, modern, safe and productive domestic egg sector in the Cayman Islands, is moving ahead, according to a press release from the Ministry of Agriculture. The aim is to upgrade production facilities and roll out a government-backed safety and quality certification programme for all local egg farmers, starting with a pilot group of the 16 biggest local producers.
Agriculture Minister Jay Ebanks said the goal of NEST was to increase the production of local, certified eggs by 100% over the coming years and improve market access for farmers.
“Our vision is for a food and nutrition-secure Cayman Islands, and a key part of making it a reality is to strengthen and grow our domestic supply of table eggs,” he said. “After two years of significant progress in laying the foundation for a National Egg Strategy, we are ready to begin operating this vital programme. Our goal is to improve the market share of local egg producers by 40% in 4 years and [achieve] a 100% increase in egg production over the same period.”
Ebanks noted that the government had “made the necessary budgetary allowance to support this important national project as it is key to our broad outcomes to enhance competitiveness while meeting international standards and future-proofing us to increase resiliency”.
Last year work began on setting food safety quality standards for egg layer operations for the first time. “The Cayman Islands Poultry Standards – Layer Operations 2022” has been published, and a 2023 upgrade will be issued sometime over the next three months, which is supported by the local producers, supermarkets and other stakeholders, the release stated.
The pilot group of 16 farmers that are testing the standards each manage around 200 birds, which produce about 105,000 dozen eggs annually — around 16% of overall local production. The ultimate aim is to certify all egg producers across the Cayman Islands and to improve that production through upgraded systems, the ministry said.
The Public Works Department is working on a poultry house model that can be used by farmers to start or improve their own laying operations. The ministry has also purchased several key pieces of equipment, which will be provided to the pilot group of farmers to help meet the standards and market requirements for NEST. This is in addition to other types of support for egg producers.
A poultry expert has been employed to contribute to the formal documentation of procedures and to guide the farmers through the expansion to improve safety and quality assurance. This will help increase consumer confidence in the domestic egg market, officials said, noting that new egg cartons have been designed with local quality certification.
“The National Egg Strategy is proving to be one of the most visible examples of our efforts to strengthen and modernise Cayman’s agricultural sector,” Ebanks said. “The NEST is in full operational mode, and we look forward to more and more Caymanians showing their confidence in the quality of this locally-developed food by choosing Caymanian-certified eggs over imports.”
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Category: Agriculture, Business
Where’s an eye rolling emoji when you need one? No wonder they enforced such a stiff penalty for feeding chickens. Maybe to discourage self-sufficiency and cordon off the market for these elite local “hatcheries”.
Pretty soon what? We can’t grow our own food in our backyard. Remove self-sufficiency, increase likelihood of food shortage. There’s so much of this happening globally. And it’s all in line with the egg shortage in the US recently. Coincidence? We’re not stupid. We see you.
Turtle eggs are the best for a nice brunch.
Well kept hens of productive age can at best produce 1 egg a day when they are feeling up for it. 200 (assuming all healthy hens) might at peak productivity generate theoretical 73,000 eggs annually, or approx 6,083 dozen. That’s far short of 105,000 eggs, and certainly not 105,000 dozen, which would be 1,260,000 eggs, or 17.26 eggs laid per hen per day. Jay needs to go back to school. Poultry mortality, manure, slaughter, hatchery waste, diseases and air quality are entirely different subjects where it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting an industrialised chicken farm “in their backyard”.
Or 96,963 bakers dozens.
No laying hen is producing one egg a day, not even in the most intensive conditions. In hot tropical climate with birds kept outdoors like here, you are lucky if you get 200 eggs/hen.
Local Select for the win! Best local eggs there is period!
chicken period! 😉
Dookie on eggs? No thanks, bobo
Wash them dipshit.
I hope they adopt EU standards not American ones and include animal welfare rules.
Animal welfare in the Cayman Islands?!
Best joke I’ve heard in years!
Eggcelent idea.
Funny yolk.
laughable stuff and the usual waffle from cig who are busy trying to make themselves look busy….
when local mangoes and eggs are nearly twice the price of imported products…..it tell you everything you need to know about cayman……
Is there a plan to start pasteurizing eggs? I’ve known too many people, including myself who have gotten sick from “fresh” local eggs, which is why I don’t buy them anymore. Any pregnant women can’t eat eggs that aren’t pasteurized either.
I think you’re just a crap chef…
Pasteurized eggs are just warmed to a point that kills bacteria. Just clean your work station and be cautious of cross contamination. If you want to use them raw sous vide for an hour at 135 degrees. Problem solved.
That’s strange. I have never ever heard of a case of persons getting sick from local eggs… and I have been buying them for about 15 years now.
Salmonella poisoning is just another in the catalog of reasons not to eat any eggs.
Only the US really pasteurizes eggs most other countries don’t. Just make sure you take proper precautions in the kitchen.
“The pilot group of 16 farmers that are testing the standards each manage around 200 birds, which produce about 105,000 dozen eggs annually — around 16% of overall local production” I make that more than one egg per chicken, per day x 365 days! Wanna try again with the math?
#WorldClass
One and a half a day all year.
Perhaps check your own math – 16 producers each with 200 birds is 3200 birds. 1 egg a chicken a day x 365 would be 1.17 million eggs. 105000 eggs is 33 eggs per chicken per year – less than 1 a week.
articlr daid 105000 dozen
Yes, correct, or just under 93,000 dozen per year.
Back in the 1960/70’s, Norberg Thompson had a thriving chicken hatchery and supplied the market needs for the product and more.
He was not given any protection from the then few local super markets who imported American eggs at a lower cost. He eventually had to close down.
So Minister Ebanks, this is nothing new and the same fate awaits those that try. I get local eggs at the moment from a cleaning lady at the nearby Gym, and they are excellent!
I remember John Bothwell having a egg production operation in WB around that time but not Mr Thompson. Maybe because I lived in WB.
Are these hens in battery cages? These are illegal in the European Union as they are cruel. Go free range!
Who cares about the European Union?
EU can suck a lemon.
No one here has battery cages. Look at the pictures. You can’t free range because of feral dogs.
duh, you would free range within the perimeters of a fence numbnut.
Chickens fly.
Listen. Had my own chickens kept in a field with a coop and a 6 foot fence. Yes they can fly up into trees to roost at night but not one chicken made is way over the fence and not one dog got in.
Last time i looked out the window, we’re a long way from the European Union….
Free range? Like the free range chickens a neighbour keeps? I have a dumping place for our cat littler boxes in the bush far from the house. The chickens can hear when we are dumping there and come running to feast down every time we dump the litter nuggets there.
so? point being?
You know what’ll help local businesses? As much red tape as possible.
Ah, the planning department philosophy
Only on an island infested with wild Fowl (all a nuisance, all laying eggs) do we need a National Egg Strategy… DWL. The Strategy should be to round up all the wild Fowl and keep them to produce free range eggs on fenced land (absolutely NO battery farming).
Any local food production is a great benefit – fewer food imports, more control over our own destiny. Please be sure it is environmantally sound – where will the manure go? Composted and made available to the public and farmers for free, I hope. Where will the feed come from? Import duty on feed?
Fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides run off into the water table and sea just like everywhere else.
One would think that with chickens in abundance all over these islands we would be totally self sufficient in local egg production.
We should have zero / zero eggs imports from Florida.
Every day I have chickens laying eggs on my property.
You are deff from WB if you think eating eggs from chickens that eat literally any pile of $hit (including rummaging through your rubbish bins) is a good idea
You know the water you’re drinking today you drank last week too?
@8:24am. And I would say you’re def a Brit!
Chicken manure=good fertiluzer.
If composted. If not it will kill your lovely plants.
And poison groundwater
Modernising Cayman’s agricultural sector would involve accepting contemporary nutritional and climate science, and moving food supply away from eggs, meat, and dairy to plant-based foods, and greenhouses. Doubling down on eggs is just a bad habit resiliency plan.
in cayman we like our eggs, meat and dairy…..eat your plant based fake food if you want to but don’t try to force it on others ….
You, your family and your friends go live off sargassum for the next couple of decades and use stricly vegan housing,transportation and clothing. Then step to the stage to share your honest experience instead of the ridiculous nonsense you spout now.
Say you hate the environment and the future of the world without saying it.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 40 years and I completely disagree with you.
@6:09:
In order for plant-based products to totally replace real meat will require a substantial increase in crops. This will greatly increase clearing of land in its natural state to make fields for the crops and it will greatly increase fertiliser and pesticide run-off. Woo hoo! We get to trade one “problem” for another.
CNS: This is not true. You need to grow enormous amounts of crops to feed the cattle to produce the meat. If people eat more crops directly, it’s more land efficient.
So when you buy local chicken eggs you get what?
1. Egg cartons that have been reused.
2. Eggs that are often dirty.
3. Eggs that are sometimes spoiled.
4. Different sizes and colors of eggs in same box.
5. Eggs that come from chickens who eat what?
I can only imagine the government bureaucracy that will be needed for this programme.
lmao. you are silly.
the comment wasnt wrong. it isnt only the egg industry. Government puts a whack load of restrictions on imported food. ceases items at the border to destroy oif temperature is off, or has a small pest, penalizes large restaurants for issues in their kitchens such as not tracking temperatures, or not labeling, but when it comes to local farmers, fisherman, permits horrible consiitions. product not stored properly, no temperature control, no cleaning areas, but if a cook has no hair net on the kitchen gets closed- unless it is a roadside restaurant with no running water or toilet run by a Caymanian, then its ok
Unless you buy from a few quality lo producers, you are correct. I stopped buying most local eggs at the grocery store for many of the reasons you cite, particularly eggs with excrement on them. What kills me is that their prices increased with the egg shortage in the US that raised the imported egg price, but now that the egg prices are in free fall in the US, the prices here haven’t gone down a bit!
All chicken eggs will have some amount of Salmonella contaminated excrement on them. Chicken feed is contaminated at processing source with Salmonella from snake, frog, and lizard waste. Hens have a universal cloaca opening that functions for all waste functions (urine, manure), mating, and the laying of eggs. All the same hole. Humans don’t need to eat any chicken eggs, and are much healthier when they don’t. The high amounts of choline are converted to TMAO in the gut, the arterial “velcro” for small particle LDL plaque buildup. Despite the considerable lobbying efforts of the commercial egg industry to suggest that choline is healthy and desirable, it’s not. Eggs are killing us. Heart attack and stroke the number one killer of both women and men eating a traditional western diet.
Salmonella is everywhere but not all the strains are the same, laying hens kept for egg production do not mate, choline is actually chloride but nobody is using that in the local egg production and eggs are not bad for the hearth, is actually the opposite based on the latest research. Your attempt to look smart failed.
Yet another Caymanian education success story!
Hence the NEST program…
“5. Eggs that come from chickens who eat what?”
Trash, discarded chicken bones, dead chickens, etc, etc
Unlike the eggs from American companies that undergo rigorous FDA inspections and rules.
Unfortunately, the FDA is a complete joke and is nothing but a criminal organization that is corrupt to its core that is also unaccountable to the public from which it purports to serve.
Look up Morris Fishbein if you’d like to see corruption in the medical industry similar to that of the USDA.
The FDA won’t allow the USDA and egg industry to classify eggs as “healthy” or “nutritious”.
But the local eggs taste a hell of a lot better than the ones imported from Florida.
Of course, you probably don’t care about the taste.
Been eating local eggs for 15 years and I don’t see the problem.
Which one will come first, regulation of the eggs, or the chickens?
Finally the Government has given Jay Ebanks something that he can handle – chicken eggs.
Minister Chicken Eggs, Jay Ebanks
Minister with responsibility for Chicken Egg Production!
I love it!!!!!
LMAO!
Stop it with the joking now, that’s en-oeuf!
This is about food security and is good someone takes responsibility for this.
More like another back slapping,”look at us, we’re busy” program.