Bird flu causes spike in egg prices

Cost of eggs soar 150% year-over-year; millions of birds culled from flocks

Kim McGill @KimMcGillLA

The price of eggs across the country, especially in states like California, has left communities reeling from the impacts of inflation and supply-chain issues scrambling for alternatives and substitutions.

Average egg prices have increased more than 150% since January of last year, rising from $1.92 per dozen eggs to $4.80 per dozen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture

(USDA), the main cause of soaring egg prices is the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that infected egg-laying hens throughout 2022, resulting in “U.S. egg inventories that were 29 percent lower in the final week of 2022 than at the beginning of the year.”

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By the start of 2023, the USDA reported “more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to the disease itself or to depopulation (culled) since the outbreak began in February 2022.

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