Comment by marifjeren 2 days ago
> The egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemic
No, it's not. But that's what the egg companies want you to believe. In truth the number of egg laying hens is only down about 5% total since the beginning of the epidemic.
Actually we do sort of know from the 2014-15 avian flu. In the 2014-15 avian flu, a 12 percent decrease of egg-laying hens was accompanied by a 220% price increase in 2014-15:
- https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-... - https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2015/06/economic-implicati...
Compare that to the current epidemic in which a 5 percent decrease of egg-laying hens is accompanied by a 600%+ price increase.
Oh FFS the conspiracy of the egg companies it's a new low.
160M chickens were found affected so far. More culled.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-comm...
Most chicken in the USA are raised for meat. There are only 300 millions that are raised for eggs laying so those numbers are staggering.
The size of the EGG LAYING population of chickens is only down 5% since the beginning of the epidemic.
160M chickens with "more culled" is not correct. 115M of those affected have been culled.
Furthermore it doesn't make sense to talk about absolute numbers culled over the course of years when the rate of replenishment of the egg layers is on a shorter time horizon (chicks grow to egg laying maturity in just a few months, which is why we saw a total recovery from the 2015 avian flu in just eight months). That's why it makes more sense to do a year to year comparison of the size of the egg laying population.
If your theory is that the bird flu has decimated the egg laying hen population and therefore egg production is down a staggering amount, answer the following question and decide whether the number is staggering:
How many eggs were produced in Jan 2021? How many eggs were produced in Jan 2025?
You don't know the elasticity of the market. I can imagine restaurants, food producers and consumers are very eager to get their weekly box of eggs. So even a 5% drop can cause a price jump that's way more.