Red Alert
Mooncakes are more expensive this year because fewer salted duck egg yolks have passed AVA's health checks.
Huang Lijie
Sun, Sep 09, 2007
The Sunday Times
IF YOU are wondering why you have to shell out more for mooncakes this annual mid-Autumn festival, it isn't to do with peak-period profiteering, but a shortage of a key ingredient - duck egg yolks.
Or more precisely, salted duck eggs which those yummy golden and red orbs come from.
Salted duck eggs were at the centre of yet another food scare earlier this year. Some were found to have been contaminated with a banned cancer-causing industrial dye called Sudan red.
 "The price hike is a small cost to pay for safe yolks in mooncakes" - Mrs Putra Eddy, consumer |
Farmers had put it in duck feed to give yolks a bright red hue.
So now, as the mid-Autumn festival rolls around on Sept 25 and mooncake fever takes hold, the result is a supply crunch in the eggs, leading to price hikes and more expensive mooncakes.
Seven of 10 mooncake retailers LifeStyle! spoke to have increased their prices by 2 to 10 per cent. So a typical tray of four single-yolk lotus mooncakes, which now costs on average $36, would have cost $33 or less this time last year.
The retailers do say higher costs of raw ingredients such as lotus paste, flour and groundnut oil have played their part in the increase, but they point to the Great Salted Duck Egg Supply Crunch as the main culprit.
The price of these eggs has more than doubled compared to the mid-Autumn period last year, when a single egg used to retail for between 25 and 30 cents on average.
Prices began rising following a supply crunch when the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) - which deals with food safety issues here - in July introduced stricter regulations on the import of salted duck eggs from all countries, five importers told LifeStyle.
The restrictions followed after recent detections of Sudan red in imports here.
So now, only salted eggs from AVA-approved establishments can be imported.
There are 16 AVA-approved establishments from China, Vietnam and Thailand. But local importers say they are experiencing difficulty finding foreign suppliers who satisfy AVA criteria.
Indeed, two importers lamented to LifeStyle that they are not supplying any salted duck eggs during this normally lucrative season.
| 1.8 million salted duck eggs rejected, destroyed BETWEEN Jan 1 and July 12 this year, 1.8 million salted duck eggs, or 30 per cent of the total imports here, were rejected and destroyed due to the presence of the carcinogenic dye, Sudan red. Twenty-two exporters from China, Vietnam and Malaysia were also suspended. Now, amid tougher regulations, every consignment of salted duck eggs imported into Singapore has to be accompanied by a health certificate from the country of origin stating that the eggs have been tested and found to be free from Sudan red. And on arrival, every consignment is tested again. Since July 13, all consignments of salted duck eggs have passed undestroyed into the market. The duck-egg supply crunch is also seen in these AVA figures: About 292 tonnes of salted duck eggs were imported from July 13 to Sept 6. Yet last year, for two months (August and September) leading up to the mid-Autumn festival in October, some 606 tonnes of salted duck eggs were imported. |
One is a mid-size egg importer, Mr Tan Lau Huah, 62, the owner of Chuan Seng Huat Egg Store, who said in Mandarin: 'I've never seen a shortage of salted duck eggs during the mid-Autumn festival in all my 40 years of business.'
He says his regular Malaysian supplier is not serving him as the latter 'finds it too troublesome to have to apply for a health certificate'.
Mr Tan's main business, however, is in chicken eggs and he imports salted duck eggs only during the mid-Autumn period. Hence, his business is still coping well.
Mr Ang Teng Hong, 62, owner of egg importer Yan Hong, has also had to suspend his salted duck egg import business, which normally accounts for 12 per cent of his earnings. His regular suppliers in Vietnam and China are still waiting for their health certificate applications to be approved.
So with yolk supplies drying up, consumers are snapping up whatever mooncakes they can, despite higher prices.
For example, four-yolk lotus paste mooncakes are flying off the shelves at the famous mooncake bakery Chinatown Tai Chong Kok Confectionery (Hue Kee).
The shop is making less than 10 per cent of its usual number of four-yolk mooncakes this year due to the egg shortage.
AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong, 58, said the authorities were alerted to the Sudan red contamination in November last year following a Hong Kong media report. It immediately placed imports of salted duck eggs from all countries under specific testing for Sudan red.
However, several months down the track, Mr Goh maintains that 'there are a sufficient number of approved sources of supply to allow the trade to bring in safe products at an affordable price', and that 'food safety remains AVA's primary concern'.
Indeed, Mr Randy Tan, 49, partner of Eastern Eggs Supplies, is importing about the same amount of salted duck eggs as last year as his suppliers had no problems securing health certificates.
Some mooncake manufacturers are coming up with enterprising solutions. The Tung Lok Restaurant chain has been offering a bean 'yolk' version made of white kidney beans and cream cheese.
Still, high prices aren't causing consumers to duck out of the traditional treat. Mrs Putra Eddy, 28, who bought three boxes of single-yolk mooncakes this year, says: 'The price hike is a small cost to pay for safe yolks in mooncakes. Besides, the festival only comes around once a year.'