Border shoppers not scrambling after limit placed on eggs due to bird flu

Coles has capped customers at two cartons of eggs per shop amid a rise in avian influenza cases across Victoria, which has affected its supply chain.

It has been placed across all stores nationally except for Western Australia.

The Border Mail spoke to shoppers at Coles at Wodonga's Mann Central on Monday, June 10, all of which weren't fazed by the limits in place.

"We're aware that there's a shortage. If everybody's is limited to X amount, if it's a dozen or two, I'm pretty cool with that," one customer said.

"Two cartons is reasonable as long as three people from the same family don't get two cartons (each)."

Another customer said they hadn't noticed any signage at the store to announce the limit, while a third said he picked up the maximum amount.

"We'll work our way around it. We just got two dozen and if there's eggs there we'll get them, if not we just don't have eggs," he said.

"What can you do about it?"

The move comes after a farm in Victoria's southwest was confirmed to be the fifth poultry farm hit by the highly pathogenic H7N3 strain of bird flu on Friday, June 7.

Four of the infected properties are located in Meredith and Lethbridge, in the Golden Plains Shire, and one is in the Corangamite Shire.

All the properties have been placed into quarantine to be cleaned, with all poultry at the farms to be culled to contain the infection.

There are currently no purchasing limits in place at Woolworths or ALDI.

Victorian Farmers Federation egg group chair Meg Parkinson said smaller operations around the Border and North East wouldn't be impacted.

"It won't make any difference to them because they can only sell what they produce, and they'll be selling everything that they produce as they do every week," she said.

"The place where there is a distribution problem is in the area where the disease is."

Ms Parkinson stressed the importance of producers having strong measures in place to limit the spread of the disease.

"Everyone needs to have good biosecurity and to keep records of anybody who might come to their farm, and be careful that they have been doing good biosecurity as well," she said.

"The last avian influenza outbreak was in 2020. It's the same strain as we had in 2020 where the four farms are.

"It's ducks that actually cause the problem. That's why farmers are so frustrated because you can do all the biosecurity until you're blue in the face and some duck lands on your property."

Sick or dead birds should be reported to Agriculture Victoria's emergency line on 1800 226 226.