An Auckland bakery owner is sending his friends and family to buy supermarket eggs for the business due to an ongoing shortage.
Sun Hoon Kim, who owns Daldang bakery, said his business uses over 1000 eggs every week but their supplier can't meet that demand.
"The suppliers can't deliver the eggs every week so we have to reduce the quantity to make, and the price, it's higher than last year, around 30% more," he told Breakfast.
"We have to find eggs ourselves, we have to go to the supermarket like Pak'nSave or Countdown."
He said the business is "just trying their best" to buy eggs each week.
It comes after a long-signalled end to cage farming came into effect at the start of this year - after having originally been announced in 2012.
Michael Brooks from the Poultry Industry Association said that in February the national flock was 3.4 million but it now sits at 3.6 million.
He said the ideal figure would be around 3.8-3.9 million but "there's actually an increase in [the amount of] eggs from a few months ago".
Brooks explained that the shortage is due to a number of things - Covid and legislation included.
"Some farmers had to exit from the old style cages in 2018 which went very smoothly.
"Another group in 2020, what actually happened, we had a glut and because farmers weren't making money they stopped ordering as many chicks and then you had the supermarket decision which threw doubt into farmers minds, you had high prices, you had Covid.
"So that combination meant instead of the market balancing out it [the national flock] dropped to the lowest level we've probably had in many years and it's just taken time to get back from there."
Also speaking to Breakfast this morning, the SPCA's scientific officer Alison Vaughan said the higher price of eggs is a fair trade-off.
"I think in the past when we've had battery-caged eggs the cost was cheaper but the price that the chickens paid was high.
"I think we've seen that New Zealanders really care about animal welfare."
Asked if she thinks the better treatment of chickens is worth the higher prices, Vaughan said it "absolutely" is.
"What we're really encouraging people to do is look at the options that are out there and choose the highest welfare product you can within your budget and with what's available."
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