You’re in the grocery store, eye to eye with a dozen eggs: $2.50. $3. When did this happen?
If you’ve found yourself saying things like “back in my day, eggs cost a buck a dozen!” you’re not alone, and you’re not crazy: According to Shayle Shagam, the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Analyst for the USDA, retail egg prices peaked in June to hit their highest mark since the 1980’s (when they actually were a buck a dozen), jumping to a shocking $2.57. And, he warns, they might spike again in the very near future.
What’s going on out there, and when can you start cracking a few eggs to make an omelet again—without feeling like it’s a luxury?
The problem started with outbreaks of avian flu in the American poultry population in December of 2014. Farmers were forced to slaughter more than44 million chickens and turkeys, and discard eggs by the millions: Egg production this year is expected to bedown by 341 million dozen,一个完整的4%不到ast year.
If you stop to think about it, Shagam says, the economics at play are quite literally chicken-and-egg, since both were destroyed: Stores of eggs can’t be replenished until the entire food chain is restored. “It’s a several stage process. You have to hatch the eggs for the grandparent flock, and they’ll start laying [more] eggs.” Egg production won’t be back to normal levels, he says, “until probably sometime in the second quarter of 2016.”
Incredibly, though, the home cook is not the party most affected by the shortage so far. Sure, Shagam says, the retail price of eggs is up by 32 percent nationwide, but “we saw the wholesale price go up 75%.” So your average grocery store is actuallynotpassing the problem along to you: If it was, you’d be looking at paying $3 or $3.50 for a dozen eggs. “The retailer may choose to absorb part of that [financial] loss,” says Shagam. “A lot of times they’ll do that to increase store traffic,” treating eggs as “a loss leader” just to get you in the door.
Who’s been affected the most? Big Baking. Many eggs are considered “breaker” eggs, and are broken right on the farm to be sold in liquid and powdered form to major restaurant chains and commercial operations (everyone from yourmayonnaise purveyor to big pasta companies). And those prices have gone through the roof right alongside wholesale prices—so much so that the American Bakers Association successfully lobbied the U.S. government to let the Netherlands export “breaker” eggs stateside.
Your local baker has likely been feeling the pinch, too (whether they use whole “shell” eggs or those “breaker” eggs). Sam Kincaid, pastry chef of Philadelphia’s High Street Market, goes through between 1,000 and 1,300 shell eggs weekly. She noticed a jump in the price of their mass market eggs in the late spring, when they surged from $2 to $2.70 per dozen. Fortunately, the solution was right in front of her, and in line with the restaurant’s goal to buy more local products: "We’ve sort of had a business-wide goal to transition all purchasing to local farms," she told us, so High Street has fully transitioned to using local eggs.
Three thousand miles away, at San Francisco restaurant Bar Tartine, chef Nick Balla isn’t feeling the pinch of the egg shortage at all, for the same reason: “It hasn’t affected us even a little bit. We only get ‘em from farmer friends.”
The good news, Shagam says, is that there hasn’t been a flu outbreak since mid-June. The bad news? We're entering fall baking season—so demand will spike as does our appetite for pumpkin bread. “If we were to go back and look historically, fourth quarter tends to be our highest period, when egg prices start to peak,” Shagam says. And he thinks the wholesale price might bump up a good 12 percent by year’s end—which may be reflected in the price you pay at the store.
The solution for now? Comparison shop if you have a farmer's market; the eggs are often of higher quality anyways. And if you don't have a farmer's market nearby and you’re watching your budget, you might want to get cracking, brave the heat, and get those pecan pies out of your system now.
