Recently, an official of the agricultural products business division of Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) said in an interview that in accordance with the actual situation of the spot market, on the basis of the relevant existing industry standards and under the principle of serving the “San Nong (agriculture, farmers and rural areas) and ensuring the food safety, DCE has designed the delivery quality standards for the egg futures after in-depth research and thorough demonstration. It is learnt that the estimates showed sufficient eggs meeting the delivery quality standards in China.
With an annual output of about 23 million tons, an equivalent of about RMB 180 billion, the spot market of eggs is large in size and stable in operation. In the course of designing the quality standards of the egg futures, DCE has given top priority to the guarantee of the food safety in line with the spot market characterized by the emphasis on the freshness in egg trade, making strict rules for the factors likely to cause the changes in the egg quality such as the sunken eggs and cracked eggs. On the basis of ensuring the food safety and the smooth delivery, DCE has reduced the trading and delivery costs of the egg futures as much as possible and encouraged the small and medium-sized layer farming enterprises to engage in the futures market so as to effectively serve the “San Nong”.
The quality indicators system of the egg futures mainly includes three parts, namely, the eggshell sensory indicator, the requirements for weight uniformity and the Hough unit indicator. The contents in the broken eggs, eggs with egg white spilled out and sunken eggs, etc., if in contact with air, tend to breed bacteria, speeding up the corruption and deterioration of the eggs. The corrupted and deteriorated eggs in contact with fresh eggs will accelerate the deterioration of the fresh eggs. It is learnt that on the spot market, the broken, dirty and bad eggs account for less than 10% of the total in wholesale markets with even lower rates in supermarkets. To ensure objectivity, DCE has tried to quantify the eggshell sensory indicator, which is set as “the eggs with incomplete shell, sunken shell, spilled egg white, cracks longer than 2cm, and the dirty area larger than 1/8 of the total should not be more than 5% of the total samples”.
According to the official, affected by the factors such as the species, age, weight and feeding conditions of the hens, the egg weights are varied, and in the bulk spot trade, the rule of the egg weights affecting the egg prices is not stable. Therefore, in the course of designing the egg weight standard, with reference to domestic and foreign standards, the eggs are divided into five grades according to the weight, and premiums and discounts are set for the egg weight uniformity with discounts implemented for the eggs of the weights in any of the weight range accounting for less than 80% of the total and no discount and premium set for between different grades of egg weight. According to the costs of sorting the egg spots, the discount value is set at RMB 200 per 500 tons.
In spot trading, the freshness of eggs is an important indicator. At present, the indicators for testing eggs freshness are mainly the Haugh unit, the air chamber height and the yolk index. Among them, the Haugh unit is an internationally adopted indicator for the freshness of the eggs indicated by the egg white condition with egg white concentration calculated according to the regression relationship between the egg white height and the egg weight. With the tests completed through professional instruments, the Haugh unit featuring simplicity, convenience, low costs and short time has been universally adopted by the egg testing institutions and producers in China, and it is also highly related to the air chamber height and the yolk index. Therefore, the egg futures adopt the Hough index to test the freshness of the eggs. Premiums and discounts are not set for the Haugh index with the eggs of less freshness not allowed to be delivered. According to the test data of the freshness, the Haugh unit of the eggs produced within 5 days is basically above 72, meeting the requirement for warehouse storage, but considering the period of one to two weeks between production and sales, the Haugh unit of the ex-warehouse eggs is set at not less than 60, which is also the standard in line with the procurement requirements in the spot market.
The official also said that in the course of designing the delivery quality standards of the egg futures, DCE has worked with the Poultry Quality Supervision and Testing Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, Dalian Quality Inspection Center and other domestic authoritative egg research institutions to test the related indicators on 3,000 samples from China’s main egg production areas, finally making the main quality indicators for the egg futures. Industry experts and farming enterprises generally believe that the quality standards feature the reduction of the sensory indicators with subjective descriptions, low test costs, short test time and strong operability, and especially, the indicators setting encourages grading the eggs with the sorting machine and the discounts are set for the delivery goods with uneven weights, which will help guide the technological progress of the industry, and improve the quality and food safety of the eggs and is of significance for promoting the stable and standardized development of the industry.