Another year, another egg shortage.
You can blame a bird flu outbreak for the nationwide shortage that is directly leading to inflated prices and empty shelves. Egg lovers better hunker down, because things are going to be like this for a while as chicken farmers try to recoup some of their lost flock.
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17.2 million hens died in just two months of the bird flu outbreak. Egg production has plummeted, store shelves are empty, and prices are skyrocketing, with the average price of a dozen eggs up to $4.33, an increase of 25% in only two months. Overall, the price of eggs has jumped up 37.5% compared to the previous year.
You Can Blame Last Year’s Hurricanes For Our Current Egg Shortage
Extreme weather conditions have contributed to the virus’s spread. Those hurricanes that hit the southeast this past summer/early fall disrupted the migration patterns of wild birds that carry the disease, causing outbreaks on egg farms that those birds normally wouldn’t have been hanging around in.
Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, told CNN that “hurricanes in the southeastern United States last year actually picked up those wild birds and repositioned them so that they were flying back over the same territory that they already flew over. And again, that just provides a greater opportunity for [the] virus to spread.”
Even if the bird flu were to mysteriously vanish today, it would still take six to nine months for egg farmers to replace the chickens they’ve lost.
The holidays have also played a small role in the price hike. Eggs play a prominent role in all sorts of holiday meals, from large batches of scrambled eggs fit for the whole family to eggnog to various holiday meal recipes requiring eggs to be used as thickeners and stabilizers. Egg prices usually jump up a little bit during the holidays, a spike that was made all the worse by the bird flu appearing just as the holidays were kicking in.
There is no clear timeline as to when egg prices will fall and when eggs will become more readily available. For now, all we can do is blame a late-season hurricane for convincing a lot of migrating birds to alter their winter vacation plans.
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