The price of eggs from To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly-man­aged farms in To­ba­go has more than dou­bled.

The Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day an­nounced an in­crease from $7 per dozen to $15 per dozen, ef­fec­tive March 2. The av­er­age price for a dozen eggs in a su­per­mar­ket is $30.

The di­vi­sion said the price of eggs and oth­er pro­duce at its farms had re­mained un­changed since 2005. It said the ad­just­ment was caused by a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in pro­duc­tion costs, in­clud­ing feed and oth­er es­sen­tial farm in­puts, and now aligns with the cur­rent mar­ket prices.

The dis­count­ed price of eggs sold by THA farms has been a source of con­tro­ver­sy in the past.

In 2021, To­ba­go farm­ers ex­pressed out­rage over the price the THA was sell­ing its eggs, say­ing it was un­der­min­ing their ef­forts and could po­ten­tial­ly put them out of busi­ness.

Yes­ter­day, the di­vi­sion said it re­mained com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing lo­cal food pro­duc­tion and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the sec­tor.

Ef­forts to con­tact Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty Wane Clarke for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about the price in­crease were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.