By J. Sidney Malone
Your morning omelet might leave a big goose egg in your bank account.
Egg prices are substantially higher this year, and it’s all because of a national avian flu epidemic.
It’s a classic case of supply and demand.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said in December that more than forty-three million chickens had been either killed by the flu or removed from production.
With fewer hens comes fewer eggs, but the same amount of people want eggs, so the prices are going up and going up a lot.
In areas like Champaign, the average price of a dozen grade-A large eggs was a dollar and eighty cents in December of 2021.
At the same time this past December, that price skyrocketed to four dollars and eleven cents.
That’s an increase of more than two-hundred and twenty-five percent in a year.
The price will likely remain high for the foreseeable future.
Avian flu threatens poultry producers while economists and officials say there’s no end.
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