Over the past few months, grocery shoppers across America have cringed amidst their strolls to the dairy aisle as a result of the exceptionally apparent incline in egg prices. Where egg consumers could run to the store and pick up a dozen eggs for a cool average of 036;1.48 in 2020, egg prices have skyrocketed to highs of 036;4.99 in 2023 in the US.
As customers clench their fists and curse the seemingly greedy grocery stores who they think have manifested these outrageous prices just because they could, many customers fail to realize that the root of the issue may not be as simple as they think.
In November of 2022, the US Department of Agriculture confirmed the first outbreak of Avian Influenza (AI) in South Carolinian backyard flocks. This would mark the beginning of the largest agrarian outbreak of disease since 2015, easily surpassing numbers previously recorded. The strain of the sickness, being highly pathogenic, quickly spread through the flight paths of birds carrying the disease, reaching egg producing farms all over the country. On February 6th, 2023, for example, a (USDA) report of 29,000 birds affected by AI came in from a poultry farm in California. The very next day, in Mississippi, just under 90,000 birds were reported to have acquired the virus.
In tackling this problem, commercial farming factories focus solely on preventing the spread of these illnesses within their coups, as AI has proven to be fatal in many cases. With exceedingly large numbers compacted into relatively small living spaces however, once a chicken receives AI, it is guaranteed to spread the disease to all it has come in contact with. Farms in turn terminate any chickens that show symptoms, and so far over 57 million chickens in the US have been put to death upon receiving the diagnosis. Chicken shortages cause a significant scarcity in eggs, and egg shortages cause prices to be ramped up.
As America faces the financial consequences of the outbreak of AI, it becomes more and more appropriate to place the blame of the high prices on these large factories. For starters, the large corporations compete directly with small farms. Because local farms spend more on maintenance per chicken and their relatively small batches of eggs, products from a local farm cost just a bit more. Small farms simply cannot compete with how low the prices are, reducing the number of local egg farms in the first place, and causing shoppers to choose the cheaper eggs at their grocery store anyway. This leads to an unhealthy dependency on the products of large egg farming factories.
Next, the congested space and bounteous numbers cause disease to become especially threatening. Deadly combination between a dependency on large corporations and the instability with their producers is exactly the reason for how volatile egg prices are in the US.
America needs to begin supporting smaller and more local farms. The promotion of local farms across the nation would rectify a vulnerability to diseases like AI, as outbreaks are much easier to control on the local level. This could completely stabilize the volatility in egg prices and eliminate the risk of outbreak of perhaps a more deadly disease. Not to mention how better, tastier, and fresher the taste of eggs from local farms truly are.
