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Rabat – National egg consumption decreased from 169 eggs per person in 2015 to just 140 eggs per person in 2016, according to National Association of Producers of Eggs for Consumption (NAPEC).
During a press conference held Wednesday in Casablanca, vice director of the association Khalid Zaiim said that this decrease is due to the “ignorance of Moroccans to the healthy benefits of the eggs,” which he contrasted against Europe and Mexico, whose consumption in 2016 reached 350 and 255 eggs per person respectively.
Zaiim noted that the annual average of the eggs consumption per person in Morocco has significantly increased since 1970, when the average was 21 eggs per person, but he admitted that the average “is still very weak.”
Zaiim went on further to say that 2016 also saw a decrease in national production of eggs, reaching only 4.1 billion in contrast to 5.1 billion in 2015. He attributed this drop to high cost of bird feed and deaths of poultry from avian flu.
According to Zaiim, Morocco has achieved self-sufficiency in the production of eggs. No longer importing chickens from Spain and France, Morocco has five incubators, producing 20 million chickens annually, along with 238 farms for the production of the eggs authorized by the National Bureau for the Safety of Food Products.
In January, NAPEC announced that Morocco has begun to export eggs to several African countries, securing revenues estimated at MAD 5 billion.
Egg production also provides about 12,000 direct jobs as well as another 30,000 indirect jobs through a massive network of marketing and distribution, according to NAPEC.
