Egg prices have hit a new high, and it is unclear when they will drop back to normal levels.
Various experts who spoke with The Epoch Times said the average price for a dozen eggs rose to more than $7 per dozen in early February.
The culprit: highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which has resulted in mass culls of America’s chicken flocks over the past two years.
Also, other inflationary factors.
The price of eggs rose by 53 percent between January 2024 and January 2025, and by another 15.2 percent in January alone, according to Consumer Price Index data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In higher cost-of-living areas like New York, the wholesale price was $8.23. In California, a state with higher animal welfare standards, the wholesale price was $9.17 a dozen.
Agricultural economists who spoke with The Epoch Times said there is not (yet) a shortage of eggs, meaning there are enough eggs to satisfy national demand.
But unpredictable HPAI outbreaks continue to impede efforts to rebuild the flock of egg-laying hens, leading to higher prices.
Carol Cardona, one of the nation’s foremost experts on avian influenza, told The Epoch Times the HPAI scenario is “catastrophic” for the nation’s egg industry.
The disease was first identified in Guangdong, China, in the 1990s, and has since spread through migratory birds.
When one bird is infected, the standard control strategy is stamping out, or culling, the entire flock in an effort to control the spread.
This strategy worked before during an outbreak in the winter of 2014–2015, but is failing now due to the rapid mutation of H5 avian influenza.
The current outbreak of avian influenza began in 2022 and has continued to the present day.
According to figures published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Feb. 12, at least 157 million birds have been affected by some form of H5 HPAI since January 2022.
Since the outbreak began, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana—the nation’s top three egg-producing states—have lost more than 55 million birds.
It has also spread to some mammals, such as dairy cows, and the humans who attend them.
“I don’t see a future where a virus like this is going to disappear just because it’s inconvenient for us,” Cardona said. “I think it’s going to continue to exploit the advantages that it has. It’s going to continue to find new hosts.”
Jada Thompson, an associate professor of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas, and David Anderson, a professor and extension specialist focused on livestock and food product marketing at Texas A&M University, told The Epoch Times that the price of eggs will come down.
But when?
“Nobody’s going to be able to give you an accurate prediction,” Thompson said. “It’s going to depend on how many more birds go out of the system.”
Read more here.
—Austin Alonzo, Stacy Robinson
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