About 14.7 million egg-laying hens have been affected as wholesale price of eggs climbs as much as 40 cents a week
Summary
US egg prices are rising due to a severe avian flu outbreak that has killed 14.7 million egg-laying hens since January, surpassing all of 2023’s losses.
Wholesale egg prices have surged, with shortages driving costs as high as $8.35 per dozen in California.
Restaurants and bakeries are struggling with higher costs, while grocery stores try to absorb some of the increase.
The issue has become politically charged as Trump and Republicans blame Biden.
Doesn't fucking matter, you get on tv, you make an ads talking about how Trump and Republicans are responsible for the increase in egg prices and you don't stop until the next election.
What's wild is we could lower the price of eggs if people just committed to not buying them. I know some things they're absolutely a requirement for, but it's not impossible to reduce the amount of eggs you need in your life.
Ehh... Feels like restaurants and similar food-related companies would be WAY bigger consumers of eggs. Would be informative to see data on this split (vs. families/individuals), though I'd have no idea how to find that.
Trump may have actually lowered the price of eggs -- albeit not of products in general.
So, he just imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Canada and Mexico stated that they would impose agricultural tariffs in response -- not a surprise, as the US is a major agricultural exporter. The list of countertariffed items is not up, but:
A full list of these goods will be made available for a 21-day public comment period prior to implementation, and will include products such as passenger vehicles and trucks, including electric vehicles, steel and aluminum products, certain fruits and vegetables, aerospace products, beef, pork, dairy, trucks and buses, recreational vehicles, and recreational boats.
They don't explicitly list eggs, but they do list things adjacent to that, and I can believe that eggs might be on the tariff list.
2022 exports: $549 million, top partner Canada at $77.4 million
2022 imports, $118 million, top partner Canada at $8.19 million.
Trump's 25% tariffs will tend to reduce the amount of eggs being exported from Canada to the US, which will drive up egg prices in the US.
However, if the Canadian countertariffs -- also 25% -- have eggs on the list, which we don't yet know, they will tend to reduce the amount of eggs being exported from the US to Canada, which is about ten times the amount coming the opposite direction. That will tend to drive down egg prices in the US...and one would expect that effect to dominate the effect from reduced egg exports from Canada to the US.
Eggs in Canada are currently much cheaper than the US. They haven't been hit with bird flu as badly (in past because they don't cram millions of hens into the same facility) so there would be little reason to buy American eggs.
I am still annoyed at all the news using verbiage like "the avian flu outbreak that has killed 14.7 million..." when in fact the avian flu didn't kill them. The corporate farmers did the killing usually using horribly inhumane methods (like "foaming" and "Ventilation Shutdown")
H5N1 has a 90% to 100% fatality rate in chickens according to the CDC. Either the chickens are killed by farmers before the virus spreads more, or the virus will kill the chickens.
These flocks would be far less likely to get infected if they were living better lives and conditions than under corporate agri-business planning and rule