If you’ve examined your grocery bill lately, you’ve probably noticed: The price of eggs have gone up.
For a few years now, egg prices have been all over the place. Sometimes the prices have been pretty stable or even low. Other times, wildly expensive.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, egg prices in February were around $2.99 a dozen. Last August, eggs were selling for around $2 a dozen.
And egg prices are expected to continue to go up, for at least a few more weeks.
As bad as a $3 a carton of eggs is, it’s nothing compared to January 2023 when a dozen eggs, on average, were $4.80.
But as people who have been grocery shopping for for a long time know, eggs have historically been among the cheapest foods out there.
So, why are eggs so expensive right now and when will prices start dropping? Keep reading for answers.
[READ: Cheap Foods to Buy When You’re Broke.]
1. The Expense of Fighting Bird Flu
For some time now, you’ve probably heard bird flu blamed for the price of eggs, and for good reason.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 82 million chickens have been infected by avian flu since January 2022.
In other words, the disease has done a lot of damage to the egg industry.
No chicken farmer wants to see their flocks wiped out. The last several months have been especially bad, says Michael Persia, a professor and extension specialist of poultry nutrition at Virginia Tech.
“In December of 2023 over 9 million laying hens and another 2 million pullets — young females before they reach adulthood — were lost to avian flu,” Persia says. “These numbers are not as bad as in 2022 but still represent a significant loss of egg production in the USA.”
So naturally, chicken farmers are spending more money to protect their flocks, adding to the egg prices.
“Egg farmers have implemented comprehensive biosecurity measures to keep disease off their farms and keep their birds safe, including things like shower-in/out and truck washes — in which the tires, undercarriage, etc., of vehicles entering the farm are automatically cleaned by machines at the gate,” says Emily Metz, the president and CEO at the American Egg Board.
Metz says that the biosecurity measures have been in effect as far back as 2015 and that farmers have been making further enhancements since then as well.
“For example, some farms have installed laser systems to discourage the wild birds that carry and spread the disease from landing on the property,” Metz says. “Other measures, like closely monitoring the health of the birds in their flocks, enhanced pest control and securing facilities and ventilation systems, are all part and parcel of egg farmers’ commitment to keeping their birds safe and healthy on a continuous basis. These birds are their livelihood,” she adds.
“A lot of barns have ventilators and open windows systems, and all it takes is a breeze blowing a little particle of the virus where the chickens are. That’s how contagious it is,” she says.
2. Inflationary Costs
Even without the bird flu killing off chickens — and the added expense of battling bird flu — it takes a lot of money to get an egg from the chicken to your egg carton, Metz says.
Adding to the price of your eggs are fuel, packaging and labor costs, which have all gone up considerably the last few years, Metz says.
“The cost of chicken feed is the highest it’s been in a decade,” she adds.
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Metz also says that “there’s the retail component as well. We can’t control what the retailers set for the price of eggs.”
These rising prices across numerous industries, causing egg prices to climb, have all led to what the media has dubbed “eggflation.”
3. The Cage-Free Trend
As chicken farms expand to offer chickens more space to roam (often, they’re still inside a building, however), it does drive up the price.
“A California law banning eggs sales in the state produced by hens that are not cage free, regardless of where they are produced, is raising production costs for producers,” says Phillip Coles, a teaching associate professor in Lehigh University’s Decision and Technology Analytics department in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
“Several other states are considering similar legislation,” Coles adds.
“Some producers who could not afford to comply or who have better alternatives in which to invest capital, have stopped production, further reducing supplies. Those who do change their production methods need to depreciate the increased costs of compliance,” he says.
4. Supply and Demand
Ryan Decker is an assistant professor of economics and director of the Center for Financial Literacy at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He points out that “eggs are such an integral part of an American diet that most people buy eggs regardless of the price. As the price of eggs increases, we’ll complain more, but we’ll still buy them.”
That’s what’s keeping the prices high, he says. If everybody’s buying expensive eggs, the farmers and retailers don’t have a lot of incentive to lower the price, especially if that means taking a hit on their own profits.
There are more than 368 million egg-laying chickens in the United States, but when you have 82 million egg-laying chickens killed, you have a lot of potential eggs taken off the market. With fewer chickens, there are fewer eggs.
It’s the classic law of supply and demand: A smaller supply with a great demand generally drives up the price.
Metz also points out that if a chicken farm has to kill all of its chickens, it can take six months for a chicken farm to sanitize everything and to replace the chickens and get them laying eggs again. So, when bird flu hammers a large commercial chicken farm, it can really shrink the supply of eggs in the market.
What Consumers Can Do About the Price of Eggs
Here are a few ideas to mitigate the cost of eggs:
— Rework your budget. If you manage to save money by lowering the cost of something else in your budget, like switching to a cheaper insurance provider or getting rid of a streaming service you never use, you might not be impacted as much by climbing egg prices.
— Find something else to eat for breakfast. There are a lot of breakfast choices out there, from cereal to pancakes. Also, fewer consumers buying eggs can give chicken farmers more incentive to bring their prices down.
— Shop around. If you don’t like the price of your eggs at one store, another supermarket may sell them cheaper.
[These Are the 10 Cheapest Grocery Stores in the U.S.]
When Will Egg Prices Go Down?
“This is our second busiest time of the year,” Metz says, noting that the end-of-year holiday season is peak egg-eating time. “There will be 3 billion eggs sold this spring.”
But Persia predicts that, barring any giant surprise bird flu outbreak, “if historical trends hold, egg prices should find some relief as soon as April.”
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Why Are Eggs So Expensive Right Now? originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 03/27/24: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
