Please understand the differences in what you’re finding online.
It’s March 2025 and eggs — the kind that come out of chickens and are a staple in American breakfasts — are not only in short supply, but more expensive than ever. This is a fact that you can confirm for yourself by visiting any supermarket or grocery store that sells them.
Bird flu is spreading throughout the US. It has caused the death or destruction of millions of commercial egg farm hens. This is also a fact. Here are some recent trustworthy references to support this:
- “USDA rolls out 5-step plan to battle avian flu in poultry,” University of Minnesota
- “ICYMI: Bird Flu Is Roiling Egg Farms Across The Country,” NPR 1A (podcast)
- “Hickman’s Family Farms struggles to meet egg demand after losing a million birds,” Arizona Republic
These were two of my hens, back when I kept chickens. I had as many as 18 at one time and was selling eggs to my neighbors for $4/dozen. I miss them but have trouble getting them cared for in the winter when I’m away.
Hens lay eggs. Fewer hens mean fewer eggs. This is a combination of fact and logic. As someone who has had a backyard flock of hens on and off for the past 30 years, I can assure you that the more hens I have in my flock, the more eggs I get.
The economic concept of supply and demand states that, well, you can read it for yourself in this quote from the Supply and Demand entry in Britannica Money:
supply and demand, in economics, [is the] relationship between the quantity of a commodity that producers wish to sell at various prices and the quantity that consumers wish to buy. It is the main model of price determination used in economic theory. The price of a commodity is determined by the interaction of supply and demand in a market. The resulting price is referred to as the equilibrium price and represents an agreement between producers and consumers of the good. In equilibrium the quantity of a good supplied by producers equals the quantity demanded by consumers.
I was a business major in college so I took Economics 101 and 102. I know this stuff. It makes sense to me. And if you think about it, it should make sense to you. Prices on items that are scarce but in demand are generally higher than the same item if it’s available in higher quantities. This can be a natural result of marketplace economics, as the above paragraph suggests, or it can be manipulated by sellers to either increase profits on scarce commodities or control the sale of them.
An example of using price to control sales is what I recently saw in a local supermarket that had some eggs available for sale. If you bought one or two dozen, they were about $7/dozen. But if you bought more than two dozen, the price went up to about $10/dozen. Hoarding has become a problem with the egg shortage and this supermarket was trying to discourage that behavior by jacking up the prices for hoarders.
That’s not to say that some producers, wholesalers, or retailers aren’t trying to cash in on the shortages. There will always be people and organizations that take advantage of a situation.
In the case of producers, I don’t blame them one bit. If you had a flock of a 10,000 chickens and lost 7,500 of them to bird flu — science says it’s 75% to 100% deadly to birds — you’d not only have to spend a boatload of cash to make sure your facility was free of the pathogens, but you’d have to buy 7,500 replacement birds. Commercial hens might be different, but I know I had to wait four to five months for any of the chicks I obtained to start laying in my backyard. That’s a huge cash outlay and reduced productivity for months. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to cash in on the eggs being laid by the 2,500 birds I have left. Supply and demand supports this, especially since the loss of hens is so widespread.
But this is still an opinion. You might think it’s fine for farmers to take a hit that might actually drive them out of business. That’s your opinion.
The farther you go up the chain from the producer with suddenly less product to sell, the less acceptable it is to cash in on the scarcity. But that’s still a moral judgement or opinion. It is not a fact.
And then there are the conspiracy theories. Big Henhouse is controlling the price of eggs and using bird flu as an excuse. There really isn’t a shortage at all. They’re just pretending it is to separate consumers from their money.
Is this a fact? No. Is it based on facts? Perhaps a few. Maybe egg prices are unreasonably high in an area that hasn’t been hit by bird flu. But maybe those producers are also sending their eggs out to areas that have been devastated by bird flu.
What is the truth? What are the facts? Are these Big Henhouse price gouging conspiracy theories what’s actually going on? Or are they just a tool to focus your hate and anger on big business?
If you’re actually trying to answer what I’ve posed as rhetorical questions, don’t just share the first Google hit that supports your view. Look at the source of the information. Far left? Far right? Anti-big business? Or a news outlet that tends to focus on fact-based reporting? Don’t respond to this post with something you read on the New Republic or in Mother Jones or in a blog post in a popular blog. That’s not news. It’s opinion and/or theory based on cherry-picked data.
I don’t know about you, but now that I’m not producing my own eggs and feeling forced to eat them every day just to keep up with production, a dozen lasts me more than a week. Yes, I’m one person and I understand that larger households probably eat more eggs. Although the prices will never get down to what they used to be — ever heard of inflation? — they should eventually come down as the bird flu problems are resolved and flocks are rebuilt. Until then, if you find them too expensive for your household, eat fewer eggs. You don’t need them for breakfast every morning. And you don’t need as many as you think you might.
Otherwise, just stop stressing over the price of eggs and worrying about who is profiting in the current situation. Despite what your super socialist friends might think, price fixing by the government is not a reasonable long term solution — especially with the current government. Buy only what you need to help prevent scarcity. If everyone did this — remember supply and demand? — the prices will likely come down sooner than later.
