Retailers report egg shortage ahead of the holidays amid surging bird flu

While most grocery prices have stabilized this year, one supermarket staple keeps getting pricier and tougher to track down: Eggs.

It was frustrating to shoppers at a Trader Joe’s in the Union Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday as they walked past an empty refrigerator case with a sign that read: “Temporarily out of eggs.” One customer, Donella Brockington, worried she wouldn’t have eggs to bake for Thanksgiving. “I hate going to grocery stores, so when I go and I can’t get what I want, it’s unpleasant,” she said.

Not too far away, at a Whole Foods Market in Logan Circle, only duck eggs, quail eggs and organic pasture-raised eggs were available. A sign informed shoppers that the store was limiting egg purchases to three cartons per customer. “We are currently experiencing difficulty sourcing eggs that meet our strict animal welfare standards,” it said.

Eggs have vanished from many U.S. grocery shelves in recent weeks, sparking consumer fears that a shortage could coincide with the holiday season. Egg production in the U.S. dropped 2.6% in October from a year ago and is projected to decline 1% in 2024 compared to 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in a Friday release.

The most recent shortage has a familiar culprit: Bird flu. A devastating outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu first hit birds in the U.S. in February 2022 and has since impacted more than 108 million poultry in 48 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Avian flu outbreaks in Utah, Washington state and Oregon last month resulted in the loss of 2.8 million birds and forced the USDA to reduce its egg production estimates for the end of 2024 and start of 2025. More hens are dying from avian flu, and the remaining flock isn’t growing fast enough to compensate, the USDA said.

“Bird flu is by far the biggest factor involved with egg prices,” said Bernt Nelson, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation. “As bird flu comes and goes, our egg prices ride the wave.”

Shrinking numbers of hens for the last two years have left retailers scrambling - and egg prices climbing. The average price for a dozen large eggs was $3.37 in October - up 30.4% from the same month last year - but lower than September’s average of $3.82. Egg prices have risen more than any other consumer staple in the last year and far outpaced last month’s overall food inflation level of 2.1%.

The USDA said in its release that it expects the price of eggs to increase in late 2024 and early 2025, meaning high costs could plague consumers into the new year. The challenge with avian flu is that it keeps changing and mutating - and as long as it stays unpredictable, the outbreak will weigh on supply and drive price volatility, Nelson said.

Avian flu usually spreads most in the fall and spring as wild birds like turkeys, ducks, geese and swans migrate for the season. These birds can easily carry the disease between farms and infect backyard and commercial flocks.

Any seasonal infection uptick usually stays isolated to the Midwest. But this fall, more birds migrated through the Pacific region, worsening outbreaks on the West Coast, Nelson said.

Egg supply last faced a massive disruption in late 2022 and early 2023, where the average cost for a dozen eggs surged to a record $4.82 during the initial outbreak of the current avian flu strain. While prices won’t hit such records this fall, consumers can expect a slight tightening of egg supply through the holiday season, said Emily Metz, the chief executive and president of the American Egg Board, which markets and promotes eggs and egg products.

“This is a virus that is very wily,” Metz said. “It affects farms regardless of production, style, shape, size, and whether it’s cage-free or conventional or pasture-raised.”

The cost of cage-free

Increased feed, labor, transportation and packaging costs have also contributed to the death of the 99-cent carton of eggs, Metz said. Egg demand is typically stable despite price changes, but inflation-battered consumers are pulling back more. The USDA reported in its release Friday that consumer demand for eggs is down 10% from 2022 and 12% from 2023, even though egg prices are about the same as they were two years ago.

Egg demand usually surges before the holidays, but as prices rise at the end of this year, the agency said it expects “a level of consumer resistance to current shelf prices.”

At some stores, eggs are harder to find because of cage-free specifications, which prohibit egg-laying hens from being confined to cages. This change is especially visible at stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, both of which have made strides to go cage-free.

Meanwhile, several states are following suit with laws requiring the same. More than a dozen states have implemented or are set to enact cage-free requirements - with the catch that they limit the pool of potential egg suppliers they can use, Nelson said.

Many recent avian flu outbreaks have happened in cage-free states, which have a harder time making up for lost egg production because they have to source all eggs from cage-free facilities, even when importing eggs from another state, Metz said. Current egg shortages and price volatility may hit harder in states like Arizona, Colorado and Michigan as they prepare to enforce cage-free egg laws starting in January.

Avian flu has had an outsize impact on cage-free hens because they have more free movement, which generally makes them more susceptible to disease, Nelson said. Less than half of U.S. hen flocks are cage-free, yet they account for more than 60% of those impacted by avian flu. Infection slows a hen’s egg production if it doesn’t kill the bird first, and infected flocks are typically euthanized to avoid further spread.

Because of the virus’s impact, farmers are limited in the number of cage-free eggs they can produce to meet demand. The USDA says the U.S. would need to produce 66.7 billion cage-free eggs each year to meet full demand, which would require a total of 221.4 million cage-free hens. But right now, there are only 106.6 million cage-free hens, leaving a shortage of 114.8 million hens.

Still, current USDA data on chick hatches is encouraging and suggests egg production will rebound early next year, Nelson said, meaning there are “replacements in the pipeline” that will help compensate for this season’s drop in production.

“Any shortages that people are experiencing are going to be intermittent,” Metz said. “To the consumers looking for eggs: Don’t panic.”

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Julian Mark contributed to this report.