Shoppers rang in the new year with record-high egg prices.
The cause? Experts say bird flu is partly to blame. Seasonal demand and destroyed egg facilities have also played a role.
Vancouver shoppers reported paying about twice what they normally pay for eggs over the past few weeks. Some found egg refrigerators at grocery stores empty.
Consumers could buy a dozen Lucerne Farms Large Cage Free eggs for $4.99 Monday at Safeway locally, according to its website. Fred Meyer’s website listed a dozen Kroger grade AA large cage-free white eggs for $6.99.
Some customers, meanwhile, said on social media that they couldn’t buy eggs at all at their local New Seasons Market stores.
A spokeswoman for New Seasons said the grocer is still receiving egg deliveries, but they’re distributed across locations.
“The allotment ensures our stores receive a proportionate share,” she said.
Bird flu, she added, has limited inventory but so has high demand and the impacts of the holiday season.
Nearly 40 million commercial egg-laying birds were lost in bird flu outbreaks and facility fires in 12 states, including Oregon and Washington, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. Washington accounted for 2 percent of commercial egg-layer losses.
Washington State Standard reported bird flu infected a flock of some 800,000 fowl in Southeast Washington in the fall.
The agriculture department said in its Jan. 3 Egg Markets Overview that seasonal demand amplified the impact of losses nationwide.
A third of the year’s egg-layer losses occurred in December, the department said, “headed into the peak annual shell egg demand period.”
The combination resulted in record-high prices for eggs, the department said.
Egg production is also down, declining at the end of December to its lowest level since May 2020, the report said.
Normally, demand for eggs slows after the holiday rush. But the department said inclement weather patterns, like those predicted elsewhere in the country in the coming days, can amplify it.
