Why Are Eggs So Expensive Right Now — and Will They Get Cheaper?
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If you’ve been grocery shopping recently, you may have noticed a lot of bare shelves in the egg section. And if you’ve managed to snag a carton, you probably spotted something even more shocking: the price.
The cost of eggs is nearing a record high after spiking the past two months. Forecasts suggest it’s not getting cheaper anytime soon, either.
According to the latest U.S. government data, a dozen eggs cost $4.16 on average in December, marking an annual increase of about 37%. By contrast, grocery prices in general rose 1.8% over that same period of time.
A separate report suggests that egg prices have risen a lot since then. The wholesale price of eggs — which is the cost grocers pay before marking them up for profit — hit a staggering $6.55 earlier this month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). For context, in January 2022, it was 94 cents.
And eggs are only expected to get more expensive as the year goes on. The department projects egg prices will jump another 20% by the end of 2025.
The cost of groceries, and specifically eggs and bacon, sparked an exchange during Vice President JD Vance’s first interview since taking office on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. Host Margaret Brennan pressed Vance on when grocery prices — a major issue Vance and President Donald Trump campaigned on last fall — are going to actually decrease.
“Prices are going to come down, but it's going to take a little bit of time,” Vance said, adding that Trump’s recent executive orders to supercharge U.S. energy production will “lower prices at the pump and at the grocery store.”
What's causing egg prices to spike?
But right now, the soaring cost of eggs has little to do with energy prices.
In the U.S., egg prices tend to rise at the start of every year, in part, due to the increased demand during the winter and holiday months when people tend to bake more. But what we’re experiencing now is far from normal seasonal fluctuations.
The main culprit? The U.S. is still reeling from a catastrophic bird flu outbreak. The strain, known as H5N1, hit the U.S. in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and has lingered since, infecting more than 145 million poultry since January 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rippling effects of the virus have wreaked havoc on the U.S.’s egg supply, sending prices to record highs. That's because when it comes to farming, if a bird tests positive for the virus, the farmer has to kill the entire flock as a precaution. Given how long this wave of bird flu has lingered, some farmers have reportedly had to kill their flocks several times.
During the last bird flu outbreak of 2015, about 50 million poultry were killed as a result, the USDA says, and that triggered an egg price bump, jumping from about $2 to $3 a dozen in the course of a few months. By spring of 2016, though, prices had already fallen below pre-outbreak levels. The cost of a dozen eggs mostly stayed below $2 until the current outbreak — when general inflation trends were supercharged by the bird flu.
Data suggests the current bird flu outbreak is several times worse than the one in 2015 — and the spread of the virus does not appear to be slowing down. According to a Money analysis of CDC data, more than 30 million chickens reared for egg production have been killed due to the bird flu outbreak since November.
The mass cullings lately are sparking egg shortages across several states and pushing some grocers to limit how many cartons shoppers can buy.
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