Egg prices surged in 2022, up almost 50% in the month of November when compared to the year prior and according to experts, things may not be getting better any time soon.
A dramatic increase in the cost of a dozen large, Grade A eggs was noted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which reported that the price rose to $3.59 in November, a significant increase from the $1.72 seen in the same month the previous year.
As noted by CNBC, bird flu is largely to blame for the egg problem as it has killed millions of hens just this year.
“A lot of things are up since 2020,” president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a consulting firm for food economics Bill Lapp said. “But the recent spike is extraordinary in the shell-egg as well as egg-product markets.”
As of Dec. 28, 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported that 57.8 million birds have been impacted by avian flu. This includes turkeys and ducks.
While bird flu is uncommon in the United States, the last major outbreak occurred in 2015, affecting a record-breaking 50.5 million birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prior to this, avian flu had not been seen for at least ten to twenty years, according to Lapp.
The New Jersey Department of Agriculture has noted that avian flu is highly contagious, with a mortality rate of 90%-100% for chickens within 48 hours, according to the CDC.
In order to prevent further spread, federal regulations require farmers to cull their remaining birds, even if they do not want to, as explained by Brian Moscogiuri, a global trade strategist at California-based egg supplier Eggs Unlimited.
Approximately 40 million hens that lay eggs, also known as “layers,” have unfortunately passed away in 2021 due to avian flu, as stated by Moscogiuri. According to the USDA, on December 1st of this year, there were a total of 375 million layers in the United States, which is a decrease of 5% compared to the previous year.
Furthermore, the production of eggs has also decreased alongside the decline in the number of layers. According to data released by the USDA on December 20th, approximately 8.9 billion eggs were produced in November, a drop from the 9.7 billion eggs produced in December 2021.
“It’s a supply disruption, ‘act of God’ type stuff,” Moscogiuri said, calling the situation “unprecedented.”
“It’s kind of happenstance that inflation is going on [more broadly] during the same period,” he continued.