The cost of eggs in California and the rest of the country is skyrocketing and there’s a reason for that.
The USDA shows the current price of a dozen large eggs in California cost about $6.72, which is double what it cost in July.
The reason behind the spike in prices? Bird flu.
One factor behind the shortage and the sharp rise in egg prices is an outbreak of avian influenza, also known as the bird flu, a highly contagious virus that is often fatal to chickens. Since the outbreak was detected last February, more than 57 million birds in hundreds of commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by it, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We had to cull close to 60 million laying hens, and the problem with bird flu is that if one hen gets it, you have to cull the entire flock,” said Phil Lempert, editor at Supermarketguru.com
That put a major dent in the egg supply chain along with the rising cost of chicken feed.
For Seegraves, the surge in prices for eggs has meant passing it along to her customers.
The avian flu isn’t the only factor impacting egg production. State regulations on cage free and organic eggs also play a part.
Infected or exposed flocks are culled to prevent the virus from spreading, a measure that has resulted in the depopulation of more than 44 million laying hens in the U.S. since the outbreak, according to the Agriculture Department. The depopulations at commercial facilities have decreased the domestic egg supply by about 7.5 percent on average each month since the outbreak began, the department said.
Lyndsay Cole, a spokeswoman with the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said that after facilities are sanitized and restocked with healthy laying hens, it takes about four to five months for them to “reach peak productivity” of about 24 eggs per month .
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