Rising Egg Prices

Anyone who’s gone grocery shopping in the past year has noticed something strange—the prices of eggs have increased nearly 60%. The companies that supply eggs to distributors, such as are informing the public of these prices being a result of a new avian influenza affecting chicken’s capacity to supply eggs for the public. A general fear of consumers has been how this flu would make its way back to them; however, it is very rare for this disease to spread to humans on a large scale. If an individual comes into contact with an infected bird directly, they can very easily become ill and suffer symptoms, but the spread from one person to another is incredibly rare, making widespread infection unlikely. However, the threat of this flu becoming a danger to humans is still one to be conscious of. While the danger to humans isn’t as prevalent, the disease has spread to other species, not avian, like minks. An entirely separate population has had their mortality rates skyrocket as a result of this new infectious disease. Once the disease reached this new species, it mutated to survive in its new host. This brings about a whole new set of concerns about what this means for humans. If this is possible in minks, is it possible in humans? That is a question that scientists are currently grappling with. 

As a result of this, the egg production industry has supposedly suffered. Millions of chickens have died of influenza, and, of course, eggs come from chickens. While the demand remains high, the supply has decreased. This was the theorized cause of the increasing price, but while the flu is a very serious, real, and prominent issue, there has been another theory as to what is the true cause of this—the exploitation of this disease for extra profit. It has been shown that the increase in prices is disproportionately larger than that of resources to produce. This fact alone makes it clear that there are other aspects coming into play with this increase, such as inflation. However, inflation affects all products, and the price of eggs have risen disproportionately more than the rest, even bringing the influenza into account. Taking this into consideration, the possibility of companies using the publicity of the outbreak to increase these prices becomes all the more believable. 

By Chloé Ghazal