No Chicken Eggs In Belarusian Stores

And that's just the beginning.

Readers of Zerkalo from different regions of Belarus report a noticeable reduction in the range of chicken eggs in stores. They say, there was a shortage of eggs in some places. Journalists found out that the factories most likely have enough of the product itself, but again there is a problem with the packaging.

"For almost a week and a half ,there were only expensive farm eggs in the store," a reader from Mahiliou said.

"The shelf that is usually filled with eggs was full of sourdough in plastic jars. Another small store said they were out of eggs," another reader from Minsk wrote.

"The chicken eggs, packaged in trays of ten, are gone. They offer to order in bulk and packaged in bags. The reason for the absence of goods at the factory has no answer. They do not know when packages will appear. Rumor has it that they say the goods went to Russia," another reader, who works in a private store, says.

- In response to order packaged eggs, suppliers say there is no packaging, and offer to take piecemeal. More precisely, cardboard trays of 30 pieces, as they used to sell them at the markets. They offer to pack it in bags," he says.

It may indicate the problem with the packaging at poultry farms.

Journalists asked representatives of three retail chains in the capital what their situation was. One store admitted that the assortment decreased noticeably. While in September the average daily supply to the store was more than 4 thousand packs of eggs, in October - already less than three. At the same time, the demand has increased by about 14%. Because of this, there is much less product on the shelves. The vacant shelves "are filled with something else". At the same time, the interlocutor says the price of eggs is rising by 10 kopecks a month.

A representative of the second trading network says there is enough product, and the supply was not interrupted. The third one also says that there were no sudden interruptions. The store receives about the same amount of product every day. Some customers also notice a lack of the product in some stores.

A reader from Homel also wrote about a good selection of eggs (and showed a photo). According to him, there are a lot of eggs even in a small store near his house, but there is a peculiarity - they are not sold in packs of ten.

This summer, there was a similar story with the lack of milk on sale. Many stores ran out of it, or the choice of Tetra Pak milk was poor.

At first, the authorities did not comment on the situation. After more than a month, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food admitted that there was a problem and explained it with packaging disruptions. Afterwards, the situation was discussed at a meeting with Lukashenka. "They don't eat Tetra Pak. People eat what's in Tetra Pak," Lukashenka was perplexed and demanded to set up production of a domestic analogue of Tetra Pak by the end of the year, despite the fact that it's not so easy to produce.