Colorado’s high egg prices are blamed on bird flu, but there’s more to the story
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Tamara Chuang |
Egg-laying chicken farmers are still recovering from the virus outbreak of 2022 but now there’s the new cage-free law, mutations and more competition as bird flu devastates other states.
Walk into nearly any grocery store at the moment and the price for a dozen eggs may shock you — if any eggs are in stock at all.
More than anything else, blame bird flu, say Colorado egg farmers, the grocery stores, the state agriculture department and nearly anyone involved in getting fresh eggs to consumers. The contagious virus can wipe out entire flocks of egg-laying chickens in days.
Coloradans already went through this three years ago when egg prices spiked after 85% of the state’s egg-laying hens were destroyed. There was also high inflation, the state’s looming cage-free law and shortages at pretty much every grocery store.
This time, it’s not just new cases of bird flu but old cases, plus out-of-state cases. There are other reasons contributing to price increases and shortages.
Cage-free law’s minimal impact
Some have minor impacts, like Colorado’s cage-free law, which passed in 2020. It went into full effect last month and requires stores to only sell cage-free eggs. The Colorado Egg Producers Association, which represents local egg farmers, said that regulations would add 16% to 18% to a producer’s costs because they had to uncage the chickens and make facilities roomier.
But that would have just raised prices by 30-50 cents, not the several dollars consumers are seeing on store shelves. A dozen large eggs at a King Soopers in Centennial on Tuesday was $7.49. Shoppers in Colorado Springs reported paying about $10 for 18 eggs at Walmart on Sunday and a bargain hunter nabbed the last pack of 5 dozen at Costco in northeast Denver for $18.67. At Safeway stores in Salida and Broomfield, a half-dozen pasture-raised eggs was about $6.50.
According to the U.S. Consumer Price Index, the average price for eggs as part of a customer’s shopping cart, was up 37% in December from a year earlier, and up 25% since June. A similar CPI measure for average price data was higher. Nationwide, the average price for a dozen grade A eggs was $4.15 in December, up 65.4% from a year earlier and up 52.7% since June.
Bill Scebbi, executive director of the association, considered the cage-free law a minor cost increase for the benefits it provides. He even opposed a bill introduced this year to repeal the cage-free law. The bill did not get far.
“That’s worth the price if we have an environment that’s more humane,” said Scebbi, who points some blame on higher egg prices on retailers. “Why do some markets have a manager’s special on eggs? (It’s) to get people in. … I think the laws of marketing and the price control at the retail level have more to do with the price of eggs than perhaps the production of eggs.”
Many stores are willing to lose money on eggs to attract shoppers. For Natural Grocers, which subsidizes the cost of a dozen free-range eggs for $3.99 for its {N}power loyalty program, the motive is to provide customers with an affordable, healthy meal.
“Costs did not increase due to the cage-free laws — because we’ve always been cage-free,” spokesperson Katie Macarelli said in an email. The store hasn’t changed the price since 2022.
That doesn’t mean Natural Grocers has an unlimited supply, though. Demand is outpacing supply, she said, and other costs have risen, such as feed prices and packaging costs. Extreme weather had strained “every stage of the supply chain,” she added. “This is especially significant for us because we only carry free-range eggs — meaning our suppliers’ hens must have outdoor access.”
Natural Grocers’ farms and vendors that supply eggs have also somehow avoided the avian flu. But what happens elsewhere “still leads to overall supply shortages,” Macarelli said.
The heavy egg losses last year cut into Colorado’s egg supply, which was still recovering from earlier outbreaks in 2022 and 2023 that decimated pretty much the state’s entire 6 million flock of egg-laying hens. Rebuilding flocks can take more than a year. There’s the bird removal, decontamination and cleanup, plus another 100-days-or-so quarantine to make sure the virus is eradicated. Only then can the farmer repopulate the coop, which means buying pullets, or young hens, and raising them to laying age.
“But right now, you can’t even do that,” Scebbi said. “If you try to buy baby chicks, you’ve got a three-month waiting period.”
Scebbi said that his network of egg producers are currently providing 60% of the eggs they once did. There are still eggs in Colorado even though production is down.
“I will tell you that every one of our farms have told me that they have met the demands of the orders that they’ve gotten from stores,” he said. “When people call and say, ‘I can’t find eggs,’ I tell them ‘Go to another store. And when you do buy eggs, buy a pack of 18 or 24 eggs. Don’t go hog wild and buy 15 dozen, because this is still a perishable commodity.’”
