If there’s a single product that epitomizes what consumers hate about high prices nowadays, it’s eggs.
Unlike political rhetoric and campaign promises, the price of food, especially America’s darling eggs is in the midst of flying sky high prices.
Everything from your Egg McMuffin®, cake and pancake mixes, bread, along with restaurant breakfast is under the gun of price increases.
Eggs are a culinary superstar, widely used in kitchens around the globe thanks to their incredible versatility and nutritional value. American egg farmers alone produce an astounding 100 billion eggs each year, as the food is one of the most common ingredients for restaurant menu items and home-cooked meals alike.
In fact, more than 90% of U.S. households have eggs in their refrigerator at any given time.
CBS News reported that at Market Basket locations in some parts of Massachusetts, customers are being asked to limit their egg purchases to two cartons per family. Another shopper on the hunt for eggs, this one in Las Vegas, reported finding empty shelves at a local grocery store. On social media, a consumer, accustomed to paying around $2 for a dozen eggs, expressed shock over now having to pay more than double that amount.
Egg restrictions, shortages and record-high prices are ruffling feathers at supermarkets across the U.S. as a deadly strain of avian flu continues to decimate the country’s poultry flocks. To the dismay of consumers still struggling to digest soaring food costs, that likely means even higher egg prices in 2025.
All too often ignored as affecting someone else, somewhere else, the bird flu, also known as the avian influenza, has caused a shortage of eggs across the United States.
More than 145 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been slaughtered since the current outbreak began, with the vast majority of them being egg-laying chickens.
The record number of chicken deaths, which includes those birds culled when infection is discovered in a flock, come as figures show egg prices have soared to the highest they have been in years, driven in large part by the virus.
Taxpayers will pick up the tab for the lost birds. To incentivize farmers to quickly report and stomp out the virus, a USDA program pays producers for the eggs and poultry they cull.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent at least $1.14 billion compensating farmers for the birds they have had to kill. A similar number wasn’t immediately available for how much has been spent to aid dairies.
USDA spokeswoman Shilo Weir said the department also spent more than $576 million on its own response.
The virus found a new host when dairy cattle started getting sick last March. That created more opportunities for the virus to linger and spread; and unlike poultry, cattle aren’t slaughtered when they get sick because they rarely die from bird flu. Pasteurization kills the virus.
Read the full story in this week's edition
