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THESE are dire times for the egg industry, with empty supermarket shelves and foreign imports a tangible symbol of supply chain dysfunctionality and strained relationships between buyer and supplier.

That egg industry leaders are now calling for guidelines from the dairy market to be implemented in the sector, namely cost of production contracts, shows how bad the situation has become for many.

This is even more intriguing when you consider that, not long ago, it was the dairy industry itself where knife-edge economics and adversarial retailer-farmer relations could be found, with this weeks back page writer, David Handley, a forceful figure at the height of the turmoil.

Now, however, it is the egg industry which finds itself in the doldrums and in desperate need of a way out of the current crisis. Many are arguing that the remedy resides in the hands of retailers, with their power to raise prices key to getting out of the current slump.

Those calls are entirely fair and the reality is that this has been a crisis long in the making and something senior industry figures have been warning about for some time, especially with feed costs rising and the energy crunch really hammering producers.

There are also wider market conditions to consider, with some established egg producers nervous for quite a while that egg production was seen as an easy addition for many farm businesses, thus leading to market saturation and oversupply.

Now, however, it is farmers, processors and retailers who are feeling the squeeze and, without informed and honest discussions between all parties, things could be left to get worse. After all, it is a resource-hungry part of the farming industry and the stakes are therefore even higher for producers.

Retailers cannot hide behind claims that this situation has been caused by avian flu, although that is having an impact; this has been a crisis created by a breakdown in relations and farmers making hard decisions as the price dropped. Many will be hoping the retailers are listening.