Surprise, Surprise: Egg Prices Reach New Record High

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The price of eggs across the country has been a hot topic recently, and that doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

An ongoing bird flu outbreak has spiked egg prices for months.

A dozen grade-A eggs reached an average price of $4.95 in January. The previous high, recorded two years ago during the pandemic, was $4.83.

The record low was $2.04, recorded in August 2023.

Some areas have seen the price of a dozen eggs exceed $10, while specialty varieties – like organic and cage-free – can be more expensive than that, depending on where you live.

With Easter right around the corner, egg prices aren’t likely to dip anytime soon.

Reports indicate that more than 158 million birds across the U.S. have been slaughtered as a result of the current bird flu outbreak. If one chicken is found to have the disease, then the entire flock is slaughtered as a way to limit its spread. 23 million of those birds were killed in January. Another 18 million were slaughtered in December.

Removing an entire flock can be devastating for a farm. It normally takes several months to get the farm free of carcasses, cleaned, and sterilized. Then of course they have to wait until the new batch of chickens are old enough to lay more eggs.

But these aren’t the only reasons for the spike.

Inflation, affecting farmers by way of higher fuel and feed costs, is also contributing to the higher egg prices.

This is a developing story.

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