Why are there no eggs?

[elf]

Careful explanation here:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/why-are-there-no-eggs-avian-flu-and?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[David W Pratt]

Which came first? No eggs, or no chicken?

[Joe (SoCal)]

I was at Sprouts yesterday and there were tons of eggs, and a woman getting a dozen looking at the price going "Thanks Biden " out loud The kicker is she was holding a carton of Certified Organic, Free Range, blue / white / and brown eggs. Basically the equivalent of filling up an Escalade with premium and complaining about the price of gas.


Ahhhhhhhhhhh Orange County California

Screenshot 2023-01-24 at 10.28.53 AM.jpg

[birlinn]

The chickens have all crossed the road.

[Nicholas Carey]

Careful explanation here:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/why-are-there-no-eggs-avian-flu-and?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

We've got eggs here in the upper left corner. They have occasional shortages, but nothing major.

Prices, though are through the roof. Even ordinary battery eggs are $7/dozen. Fancy open-pasture, organic, happy eggs can be $9/dozen.

Part of that are battery flock being culled, but I suspect a lot of that is opportunism - avian flu is being used, like "supply chain issues", as an excuse to jack prices. You know the farmers aren't seeing much, if any, of the increase retail price.

[Osborne Russell]

They still have farmers? I thought it was all Salvadorans working for Tyson. The sheds need fans strong enough to blow my house down just to keep from killing the chickens and the Salavadorans. That's a farm?

[John Smith]

I was at Sprouts yesterday and there were tons of eggs, and a woman getting a dozen looking at the price going "Thanks Biden " out loud The kicker is she was holding a carton of Certified Organic, Free Range, blue / white / and brown eggs. Basically the equivalent of filling up an Escalade with premium and complaining about the price of gas.


Ahhhhhhhhhhh Orange County California

Screenshot 2023-01-24 at 10.28.53 AM.jpg

This reflects a point I've often tried to make. Too many people blame/credit the president for too many things the president has little or no control over.

[ron ll]

Just got back from Krogers. Tons of eggs, $3-4/dozen.

[SaltyD from BC]

You know the old expression that's chicken feed? As in cheap. That hasn't held true the last couple years. Add the bird flu and other issues like devastating floods last year that ruined a lot of poultry farms in this area for instance and costs have gone up. Personally, I still feel the grocery stores are making a little more bank than they need to, they seem awful slow to move away from supply chain/pandemic issue pricing even though said issues are mostly gone.

[LeeG]

I was at Sprouts yesterday and there were tons of eggs, and a woman getting a dozen looking at the price going "Thanks Biden " out loud The kicker is she was holding a carton of Certified Organic, Free Range, blue / white / and brown eggs. Basically the equivalent of filling up an Escalade with premium and complaining about the price of gas.


Ahhhhhhhhhhh Orange County California

Screenshot 2023-01-24 at 10.28.53 AM.jpg

And yet no “thanks Biden” now that gas is back down.

[WszystekPoTrochu]

You can always recalculate the cost and just get yourself a hen:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/20/b...hnk/index.html

What all these newbie farmers forget about is they'll be at least as vulnerable to bird flu. But hey, at least the food waste in private homes will go down, right? Right?

[Steve McMahon]

Local free run eggs from any number of our neighbours $3.00 a dozen. Imported (Nova Scotia) commercially grown eggs at the local store are $4.99 a dozen.

[elf]

Some of you didn't read the article.

[JayInOz]

No bird flu here. The chicken feed I buy- several bags a week- is now $32.50 per bag and will keep getting dearer as a huge area of cropping country either had crops destroyed by floods or was too wet to get planted, so grain is going to get hard to find for a while. That said, I take a trap setter (digging tool) and a big bowl of eggs and bury the eggs beside some of my corn plants every couple of days. Lately it's mostly guinea fowl eggs. Good fertiliser. JayInOz

[StevenBauer]

Some of you didn't read the article.

Many here never read the article.

My son picked a good year to get chickens. Plenty of free eggs for us.

[Nicholas Carey]

They still have farmers? I thought it was all Salvadorans working for Tyson. The sheds need fans strong enough to blow my house down just to keep from killing the chickens and the Salavadorans. That's a farm?

"Farmer" in terms of the operator of a egg/chicken battery is something of a misnomer. "Factory owner" might be a better term.

I'm told that there are really only a few large corporations producing the vast majority of consumer eggs. The "farm" the work out to farmers operating the egg batteries, who are generally required by the contract to

(1) Buy the chickens from the corporation
(2) Buy the feed from the corporation
(3) Sell the eggs to the corporation

And... the risk is all on the battery operator. If the chickens die from or have to be put down due to avian flu, the battery operator is on the hook.

The corporation makes money coming and going, and the farmer takes all the risk.

Nice work if you can get it.

[robm]

Raise 6 million chickens, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.

[shortboot]

If it isn't what it was or should be you can thank biden and his cronies. hold on , 2 more years of failures in the future from eggs to energy. vote Republican!

[stromborg]

Sort of glad the coyotes ate the last of my chickens before Xmas last year. Actually, I was glad to not be a poultry farmer before having to worry about avian flu but I gave it a good dozen or so years. I do miss being able to feed them vegetable scraps, I found it much easier than composting.

[Garret]

They still have farmers? I thought it was all Salvadorans working for Tyson. The sheds need fans strong enough to blow my house down just to keep from killing the chickens and the Salavadorans. That's a farm?

Damn right it's a farm. By calling 'em that, they get way more in subsidies, looser environmental regs, easier zoning, lower taxes, etc. etc. Calling 'em factories would cost them zillions.

[Osborne Russell]

Raises the question, who's farming whom.

[LeeG]

Some of you didn't read the article.

No I did not!

[LeeG]

Sort of glad the coyotes ate the last of my chickens before Xmas last year. Actually, I was glad to not be a poultry farmer before having to worry about avian flu but I gave it a good dozen or so years. I do miss being able to feed them vegetable scraps, I found it much easier than composting.

Oh god I definitely could be a vector.

[LeeG]

No bird flu here. The chicken feed I buy- several bags a week- is now $32.50 per bag and will keep getting dearer as a huge area of cropping country either had crops destroyed by floods or was too wet to get planted, so grain is going to get hard to find for a while. That said, I take a trap setter (digging tool) and a big bowl of eggs and bury the eggs beside some of my corn plants every couple of days. Lately it's mostly guinea fowl eggs. Good fertiliser. JayInOz

Yikes. Our feed has gone up 15% this year. It’s about $18 a 50# bag. It’s from a farm/mill about 40 miles away whose biggest customer is a distillery that advertises non-gmo vodka. Cracks me up.

[PatrickXavier]

We have the same problem, apparently for different reasons. Maybe it's a global conspiracy.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/10...ll-our-eggs-go

[Canoeyawl]

Oh god I definitely could be a vector.

You could wear a mask
oh, Wait...

[George Jung]

Higher costs, more involved environmental controls. An Iowa producer had to 'euthanize' 6 million chickens because of flu. The stuff runs downhill.

[sonofswen]

good read. (part of a Robert Reich article)
So what’s caused egg prices to soar?
After sifting through the evidence, Farm Action concludes:

The real culprit behind this 138 percent hike in the price of a carton of eggs appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40 percent.
What Cal-Maine Foods and the other large egg producers did last year—and seem to be intent on doing again this year—is extort billions of dollars from the pockets of ordinary Americans through what amounts to a tax on a staple we all need: eggs. They did so without any legitimate business justification. They did so because there is no ‘reasonable substitute’ for a carton of eggs. They did so because they had power and weren't afraid to use it.Not especially sunny-side up — but at least not scrambled by Fox.

While avian flu and inflation may have contributed to some of the rise in prices, the extraordinary surge certainly smells rotten. The leading egg firms have a long history of cartel-like conspiracies to limit production, split markets, and increase prices for consumers.
Farm Action wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. On Tuesday, Senator Jack Reed asked the FTC to investigate whether “fowl play” by egg producers may have harmed consumers.

[George Jung]

I hadn't seen that - that's a stinker.

[Dave Wright]

good read. (part of a Robert Reich article)
So what’s caused egg prices to soar?
After sifting through the evidence, Farm Action concludes:

The real culprit behind this 138 percent hike in the price of a carton of eggs appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40 percent.
What Cal-Maine Foods and the other large egg producers did last year—and seem to be intent on doing again this year—is extort billions of dollars from the pockets of ordinary Americans through what amounts to a tax on a staple we all need: eggs. They did so without any legitimate business justification. They did so because there is no ‘reasonable substitute’ for a carton of eggs. They did so because they had power and weren't afraid to use it.Not especially sunny-side up — but at least not scrambled by Fox.

While avian flu and inflation may have contributed to some of the rise in prices, the extraordinary surge certainly smells rotten. The leading egg firms have a long history of cartel-like conspiracies to limit production, split markets, and increase prices for consumers.
Farm Action wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. On Tuesday, Senator Jack Reed asked the FTC to investigate whether “fowl play” by egg producers may have harmed consumers.

I've always like Reich, but a lot of folks have responded to his thoughts. I like this one. It's simply a chart of changes in egg prices over the months. I just look at the chart and see the variability. I'm guessing that avian flu accounted for the somewhat higher recent price increase. We can look at the chart in the future and maybe decide what really happened:

Screenshot 2023-01-26 1.43.49 PM.jpg

[LeeG]

You could wear a mask
oh, Wait...

Might not be a bad idea when mucking out on hot dry days.

[LeeG]

NPR had short bit on eggs, apparently freeze dried are quite pricey. I’m entertained by the variety of shapes in our eggs. Either commercial chickens have calibrated cloacas or they turn a lot into egg products because only about 10% of ours look as similar as storebought. One chicken lays huge eggs that are often doublers, one occasionally drops a yolkless small one. This morn there was a white light green blue egg shaped like a long football, egg size of course.

[Dave Wright]

My wife put half a dozen eggs in a pan of water on the stove, but didn't tell me. She went off to do something else. Ten minutes ago I heard a loud "crack!". I found the pan on the stove, burner and bottom of the pan glowing, one of the eggs had exploded, the other 5 were pretty much burned solid. So much for hard boiled eggs. I'll have to run to Winco for some more. I normally pay less than 2 bucks a dozen, probably have to pay over $3 a dozen now.