Eggs again? The Washington Post reports that yet another chicken plague is tanking supply:
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 percent in October from a year ago and is projected to decline 1 percent in 2024 compared to 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in a Friday release.
Hmmm. 2.6% doesn't seem like much, does it? But apparently it is:
The price of eggs has nearly doubled in response to a 2.6% decline in supply? Eggs must have an elasticity from hell. Sales are holding up fine:
Are egg producers really selling 97.4% of their normal egg supply for twice the price? That seems . . . not very likely. What's going on?
I blame Obama!
But don't worry. Trump will fix it by mandating chickens not be vaccinated.
OTOH who's going to pack the eggs once he deports "the illegals"?
Interestingly the US is somewhat outstep with the rest of the world on poultry vaccination. Unlike most vaccine skepticism there is actually some true scientific debate particularly when it comes to bird flu. There is some probably valid concern that due to the huge wild bird vector that some vaccinations may actually have negative effects due to selective evolution and recombination.
Eggs do have an elasticity from hell. It takes at least 4 months to increase domestic egg supply by any significant extent (take a guess why...).
Small increments can be made over the course of several weeks by delaying slaughter and adjusting feed schedules, but these are really minor. Imports can make up a bit more, but it is very costly to ship eggs from Europe, which has the capacity. Shifts from inventory of dried/liquid eggs can help reduce the impact on manufacturers who use eggs as ingredients, but that does nothing for table eggs used by consumers.
Bottom line, a 1% reduction in supply tends to lead to 10%-40% increase in price.
Demand is slow to adjust to higher prices because eggs for breakfast are an ingrained habit. It's ever been this way--I can remember price spikes back in the 1950's, before small poultry producers were driven out by contract farmers, enabling the big guys to manage supplies better. Better at least until we got avian flu hitting the big flocks.
Basic foodstuffs are pretty much always inelastic. That's why it's necessary for government to intervene in farming with subsidies, price supports, insurance, and a whole host of other programs designed to prevent supply, and price, from oscillating out of control.
Eggs are actually not bad; as you say it only takes a few months to increase the supply of eggs. For grains, if this year's harvest is skimpy there's no way to increase the supply until harvest time next year (it's a good thing that grain can be stored for years, which smooths out the peaks and valleys). For beef or milk, it takes multiple years to increase herd sizes enough to substantially increase supply.
I do love that because Kevin doesn’t know about something, it just be suspicious.
Eggs are a basic ingredient for many products (mayo, cakes, dressings) - it’s 100% inelastic for those goods though I suspect many of those companies have their own supply chains. I wonder if the fact that many got conditioned to paying higher prices led to less resistance this time around. Talking about eggs, during farmer’s market day, a guy was selling duck eggs $6/half a dozen. Could not believe the size of those things, at least twice the size of large eggs. One egg would be sufficient for an omelette. Has anybody tried them?
It's a lot of yolk. Not ideal for scrambling or an omelette TBH
I have never paid more than $3.99 for a dozen eggs. There are plenty on the shelves for twice that price, but when the price goes up, stores use them as loss leaders. Just don't buy the expensive ones.
My father occasionally ate duck eggs. Said they taste the same as chicken eggs. Just more.
According to news reports based on interviews Harris lost the election because millions of voters couldn't make ends meet - they were being killed by high prices. But nobody seems to have any problems coughing up double the price for their daily eggs. Couldn't they eat corn flakes instead?
Have you seen the price of cereal these days???
Just to note, Safeway's egg prices were great here -- until they switched to cage -free-chicken eggs, end of '23. They've doubled and then some since then.
This is clearly begging for a conspiracy theory. Big Egg something something 15 minute city.
You excluded this part.
Most of the west coast has gone cage-free: California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada.
You do realize the prices for caged eggs rose the same as the prices for caged free eggs. Which completely destroys your logic (or lack thereof).
Other than the story stating that Avian Influenza had affected cage-free birds more, and that there was far less cage-free birds than what was needed to keep up with demand, implying a higher rise in cost of cage-free eggs, there is this:
USDA Nov 2024 report:
Natl Average Retail Ad Price - Conventional caged $2.03 (+17%)
Natl Average Retail Ad Price - UEP Cage-free2 $3.46 (+27%)
What angers me is that noone, and not even, Ms Harris brought up the mass culling of chickens due t o Avian Flu:
"Overall, 92.34 million birds have been killed since the outbreak began in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture"
That's a lot of birds not laying eggs for two years, ( I wonder if the Harris advisors advised against bringing up a new virus threat...but telling the truth about egg production would have been valuable...in my Expert Opinion...lol) Traveller
Yeah, chalk this up once again to "Most Voters Don't Have A Fucking Clue About Anything" part the millionth. People weren't imagining that egg prices have been a lot higher the past couple of years (with a brief respite before prices started claiming again this summer), but had absolutely no idea that it was almost entirely due to the stunning numbers of birds that had to be culled due to bird flu outbreaks. News programs would occasionally cover this, but as we now know, a lot of low-information voters are getting their news from TikTok influencers or Joe Rogan and so don't even have dots to connect if they wanted to.
Same thing with how severe drought in the lower Plains states over the past couple of years has sent beef prices soaring. For most folks, though, it was just Joe Biden sitting at the Resolute Desk hitting that ol' "Make Prices Go Up" button he had installed there.
Trump isn't going to (and isn't able to) do a goddamn thing about this, so we'll see what people are saying in a year or two.
"Trump isn't going to (and isn't able to) do a goddamn thing about this, so we'll see what people are saying in a year or two."
This isn't strictly true. He can direct the IRS and other agencies to harass supermarkets into selling eggs cheaper in the short-term "or else you might face nasty audits" etc., and the supermarkets will likely comply, taking a loss on eggs and making it up by marking up everything else to cross-subsidize. But yes, over the long-term, supermarkets can't sell eggs below cost forever, and eventually supermarkets will just stop stocking eggs or go out of business if Trump insists on dictating prices from the White House.
The way these people are fanatical about egg and bacon prices I really worry about their cholesterol levels.
1+
Eggs don't raise cholesterol levels. We've know that for decades now.
https://frinkiac.com/video/S06E12/KhLZ1Z2Q0BJErPxwKJ8RioXWggI=.gif
Part of what is going on is the opacity of the market, due to Republican state legislatures and state agriculture departments protecting the egg farms from scrutiny. Here in Central A'ha'a, we live so close to one of the largest egg farms in the country (4% of national production) that they can set prices on a whim.
Nothing gets between Americans and their cardiovascular disease.
Eggs don't actually cause cardiovascular disease. That 1970s belief was disproven decades ago but liberals can be as ignorant as conservatives.
All animal foods cause CVD. The egg industry funded studies may conclude otherwise.
When I teach basic micro economics, eggs are one of the examples of an item with a very low elasticity of demand. Why? 1. They don't cost very much. If the normal price is $3.00 a dozen, even a 50% increase in price only makes them $4.50 which is still affordable for most people. 2. Not only do people eat eggs, but they are used in making a lot of other things and there aren't really good substitutes.
Do you also explain to the class that - even though most people can afford eggs at $3 or $4.50 - any dramatic change in price can lead to significant political upheaval? Or do you not cover externalities like "a 50% increase in price also increases the chance of civil war erupting by 1%," because after all, it's not like the producer or consumer directly has to pay that external cost at the supermarket checkout?
People will complain about the price of eggs because they can...while they are still buying them.
The price of bacon though....
I would suggest looking at the stats at: https://unitedegg.com/facts-stats/ if you want to understand a bit more about the price of eggs. As some have suggested here a fair bit of it can be attributed to a change in the proportion of cage-free eggs.
From that link:
"At the end of 2022, 34% of all hens were in cage-free production, up from 28% in 2020 and 14% in 2016. According to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, approximately 66% of U.S. hens must be in cage-free production by 2026 to meet projected demand."