Turkish egg companies enjoy exports to Iraq, EU

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s egg producers are starting to enjoy high demand from neighboring Iraq, as well as the European Union despite the bloc’s tight regulations on food imports.

“Some 90 percent of Turkey’s egg exports go to Iraq,” Hüseyin Sungur, the general secretary of the Turkish Egg Producers Association (YUMBİR), told the Daily News in a phone interview yesterday.
“We have been exporting eggs to the European Union in the last two months, as well. This started with Greece,” he said. Turkey’s total egg exports amounted to about $300 million this year to date, he said.
In response to a question about a recent report by the news portal of daily Haaretz, Sungur said chickens in Turkey were inoculated against salmonella.

An Israeli law firm, which filed a class-action suit claiming misleading consumer practices in the sale of imported eggs, alleged that “Turkey does not require its chickens to be inoculated against salmonella, as Israel does,” and that the eggs’ country of origin is not marked on them, Haaretz reported.

Sungur said Turkey has not exported eggs to Israel in the last two months and that Turkey does have strict regulations against salmonella and a vaccination program in place.

Turkey meets the eligibility criteria for the EU’s import of eggs and hence is the third country on the EU’s egg import list, Sungur said.