Egg prices have soared in recent weeks as avian influenza spreads in the United States, throwing another curveball at consumers looking to stock up for the upcoming holidays.
Last month, 12 large Grade A eggs cost nearly $3.65. According to That's up from $3.37 in October, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The price for the same amount of eggs earlier this year was $2.52.
“The eating-in index increased 0.5% for the month. Four of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in November,” the BLS said. said in a news release earlier this month. “The Meat, Poultry, Fish and Eggs Index rose 1.7% for the month, the Beef Index rose 3.1% and the Eggs Index rose 8.2%.”
The rise in egg prices comes as farmers across the country grapple with the spread of bird flu. California declared a state of emergency this week due to the spread of the virus detected in cattle herds. West Coast states have the highest number of known cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed at least 61 human cases in eight states since March of this year. The first serious case of bird flu in the United States has been discovered in Louisana.
“There's a shock in supply and an increase in demand,” says David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University. said New York Times. “This is a recipe for prices to go up, and in this case, quite significantly.”
In late May of this year, the virus was detected in a commercial chicken flock in Sioux County, Iowa. As a result, more than 4 million chickens had to be killed. Iowa is the top state in egg production.
“I wouldn't be surprised if we hit a new retail price record,” David Anderson, an agriculture professor at Texas A&M University, told the Times, adding, “The pressure for higher prices is real.”
Some groups have pushed back, arguing that the virus outbreak has not had a major impact on egg production and that the price hike is, in fact, “an act of profiteering that has enabled the largest scale of egg production, and more fundamentally… They claim that this is due to an “anti-competitive market structure.” Domestic producers will engage in such profiteering with impunity. ”
“The avian influenza outbreak did not have as significant an impact on egg production as the industry represents. Approximately 43 million laying hens were lost to the avian influenza outbreak in 2022, but all at once “It was not lost; more than 300 million other chickens were always alive and laying eggs for America that year,” Farm Action, an anti-monopoly group, wrote in its statement. There is. report It was released in September.
“The domestic monthly flock number of laying hens in 2022 was, on average, only 4.8% lower year-on-year. Add to this the production impact of losing these hens itself. was slowed by “record” spawning rates throughout the year. This spawning rate was on average 1.7% higher than that observed from 2017 to 2021, the group said. Said.
