The Egg Crisis 

Staff Writer: Kaitlyn Henscheid 

Why have eggs been so expensive? Recently many people have been complaining about skyrocketing egg prices. Ever since Covid in 2020, the whole world has seen exponential inflation on almost everything. During covid, no one could go anywhere, and people began saving their money instead of spending it. The economy was on a temporary pause but when covid restrictions began being lifted people went right back to spending all their saved-up money. This put businesses on temporary standby causing a lot of trouble meeting the ever-increasing public demands. Because businesses were struggling to fill demands this in turn initially raised the prices. This is the main reason why consumers have seen increased prices on things like homes, gas and food. 

However, this doesn’t fully answer the question of why egg prices have gone up so much in the past month. There are 3 main reasons for egg prices erratic increase in price in addition to inflation from Covid. The first being an increase in demand because of the holidays. During the holidays the demand for eggs rose a significant amount. This was due to all the delicious home cooking people were doing for the holidays whether they were making Christmas cookies or making an extravagant bacon and egg breakfast for 12.  

The second reason is that production costs for farmers are increasing. This goes along with general inflation which hit farmers the hardest, making supplies like chicken feed which has significantly gone up and livestock more expensive. This is an issue because chicken feed is one of the major costs when it comes to egg production and in turn then inflates the price of produce when it gets to consumers.  

The Third reason is an outbreak of bird flu which is significantly decreasing the number of chickens. On USA Today, Amanda Perez Pintado claims that about, “43 million egg-laying hens were lost in the outbreak since February 2022 according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” This massive outbreak has led to the virus spreading at an extremely fast rate wiping out millions of chickens. With so many chickens’ dead, egg production has slowed down and can’t keep up with the demand. All these factors combined have resulted in a massive price increase in eggs. 

As a result of Increased egg prices some people have even thought about cutting out the middleman and getting their own chickens. According to Pintado, “Consumers in states like Massachusetts and Arizona have resorted to raising their own chickens.” While this might seem like a good idea right now, there are tons of extra costs to getting chickens. Having land for them, buying a chicken coup and chicken feed are just a few necessary costs for chickens. After adding up all the expenses people would be better off just buying eggs at the store. 

While it is uncertain when egg prices will drop, for now people will have to deal with spiked prices. Researchers are hopeful that the Bird flu will soon be over, they predict that egg prices will return back to normal in the summer.