Did you grocery shop this week? Were you able to buy eggs? For how much?
These are the questions millions of Americans are asking this year, as a sizable outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu, has stripped the shelves of eggs. Prices have since soared, and the poultry industry has placed the burden squarely on consumers and business owners.
Over the course of 2024, the average price for a dozen grade A eggs rose 65%. Another 20% increase is expected this year. Some grocery stores, including Trader Joe’s, Costco, and Sprouts, have set limits on how many cartons a customer can buy at once, Time Magazine reports.
Costs reached as high as $9 per pack in some states, a surge that many attribute to a supply shortage. Chickens contracted H5N1 on factory farms in some of the nation’s biggest poultry-producing regions, such as Iowa, Ohio, and other midwestern and southern states. As a result, huge populations of birds had to be killed; in December alone, roughly 23.2 million were put down, Time explains.
The bird flu has been around since at least 1878, and it wasn’t always as big a deal. However, as our food system grew, it stuffed more animals into fewer farms. The large agricultural companies taking root were designed, like any other industry, to prioritize profits and cut costs. These forces made diseases like the bird flu worse, and left workers and the public vulnerable to health threats, according to Farm Action.
Yet to the poultry industry, these outbreaks are simply the cost of doing business. The U.S. Department of Agriculture bails corporations out when a flock gets sick, and that cost is passed on to consumers through taxes, and again at the grocery store. This system doesn’t create much incentive for big companies to change their ways, Farm Action explains.
Now, Americans eat a lot of eggs each year — roughly 300 per person, according to Statista.
That means consumers and small businesses are both feeling the squeeze from the bird flu. And yes, more is at stake than just brunch.
Granted, breakfast dishes famously include eggs, and those diners and restaurants are taking a hit. American chain Waffle House even implemented a 50 cent egg surcharge, per AP News.
Yet if the big chains are feeling it, you know local businesses are too. Foods made with eggs sustain the economy — from baked goods to pasta to ice cream — and small business owners around the country are making the tough decision of whether to raise their prices or not.
In Atlanta, some bakers are also considering making the switch to vegan and eggless products to skirt around the shortage, Rough Draft Atlanta reports.
On the flip side, local egg producers are seeing a significant rise in demand for their products, from Massachusetts to Hawai’i. The risk of the flu spreading to their flocks is real, but by operating separately from the gears of Big Poultry, small family farms — or even your neighbors with a chicken coop — are more shielded from the outbreak and can get a boost from the shortage, Hawai’i Public Radio explains.
Aside from the loss of a reliable source of protein in the morning, the bird flu also poses a degree of risk for human health. Farmworkers and veterinarians in particular may be exposed, but experts say the general public is in all likelihood safe from the virus, Sahan Journal reports.
That’s because it is not currently transmissible human to human, though at least 68 people have contracted it from animals and one person with preexisting conditions has died. Certain strains have spread to goats and cows as well, stirring concerns about the next pandemic, science journal Nature reports.
However, it is still far too soon to make that assumption, according to John Swartzberg, an infectious disease specialist at UC Berkeley.
The best course of action, he says, is to just follow already recommended health guidelines, like cooking meat to 165 degrees Fahrenheit and not consuming unpasteurized dairy products. Getting your flu shot is also a good idea, per Epicenter NYC.
