The world egg production is 60 million tons, out of which 40 million tons come from Asia and nearly 30 million tons come from China alone. Considering Asia as one area we can find that 15 countries making up Asia are quite different from each other, both with regard to culture, religion, wealth, infrastructure and also eating habits.

In this context it may be stated that China is the top egg producer in the globe, whereas India has a third position in the world. But in spite of this position the egg industry is not quite developed and there is major room for industrialization leading to higher efficiency and improved returns. In many countries excluding Japan, fresh eggs are still the main product in the egg industry.

There are only 110 further egg processing factories and laying farms with modern cage systems in E-C housing in all of Asia. Most regions have smaller laying flocks with birds being kept in open houses. Take the instance of China about 76 % of eggs are collected from smaller back yard farms and other 24 % of eggs come from commercial farms. Presently highly advanced industrialized farms are showing up now with flocks in the millions.

The current buzz words in the poultry and egg industries around the world are safety and disease prevention, with a big focus on Bird flu (AI), which continues to disrupt the industry putting great strain on an already difficult industry facing tremendous fluctuations. The industry is now facing increasing feed costs, primarily due to the production of bio-fuels made from corn. These farms become increasingly subject to the fluctuations in feed costs and vulnerable to diseases.

Controlling the egg quality has also become very difficult due mainly to the constant use of antibiotics and nitrofurans in the feed. The traceability factor has become a national concern and consequently export is suffering much due to safety reason. Printing on each egg with date of lay and a tracking number means it is possible to track the egg backwards to which shed it came from, and thereby determine which batch of feed was used at the time. This further brings about the need to set up controlled environments with individual handling of eggs.

Egg prices fluctuate widely within Asia and the prices are being influenced by factors such as domestic consumption, degree of industrialization, disease prevention and reliance of imported feed. As a result of very low domestic consumption India has the lowest prices of eggs by far. The odd one out is China, which has a large domestic consumption more than 90%. But due to extremely large production the costs remain low.

Regulating the shell eggs is the first step towards industrialization. There are very large differences in the level of grading found in Asia, ranging from 0 in a country like Indonesia to being almost a prerequisite in a country like Malaysia. Grading and packing can be done on a large range of machines with different capacities and differing ranges of automatic detection.

The egg industry needs a paradigm shift to meet the multiple challenges. Industrialization now dominates every link in the food chain from the manufacture of seed to processing, preparation and packaging for the supermarket shelves and industrial food product manufacturers.