AUSTIN (KXAN) — Wholesale egg prices reached a record high this week as the bird flu outbreak continues to limit supplies severely.
Large eggs are now selling at $7.25 per dozen, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
To try and stop the spread of the disease, farmers are killing millions of chickens, raising the price of the remaining healthy chickens and their eggs to a premium.
David Anderson, Ph.D., is an economist and professor at Texas A&M. He talked with KXAN News about the many challenges the industry is facing.
The transcription of the interview below has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Tom Miller: How high are egg prices right now and what is driving that up?
David Anderson: So this is by far record high prices looking at the wholesale market. The big culprit in this is bird flu. If it hits an egg farm, most of the chickens die. The rest of them are sick. You don’t get any eggs. We are constantly getting these supply shocks where the disease continues to hit new farms, wipe out the hens, cut egg supplies, and drive up prices.
Tom: Are there a lot of poultry farmers here in Texas, and how is the industry handling this?
Dr. Anderson: We have a lot of poultry farmers in Texas, and a lot of our production is what we call Broilers. A Broiler is a young chicken that is destined for wings, for the Super Bowl, your chicken breast, tenders, nuggets, you name it. We also have egg production. The data we get from USDA is a little unclear as to where we rank, but it’s pretty clear we got a lot of them, and so we do have a lot of production.
Tom: For the farmers who are impacted by this, what is that process like trying to recover and how long can that take?
Dr. Anderson: It’s pretty devastating for a farm that gets this. Think too about our egg production system in the US. We have about 304 million egg-laying hens that are going to table eggs. Our farms tend to be very large, a million to two million egg-laying hens. That production facility gets wiped out, there’s no more production coming out of there. So you got to try to rebuild your flocks. That involves getting more eggs so that those will hatch into pullets, young female chickens. Then in about six months, they’re going to start laying eggs and then get to their full maturity and start producing.
Tom: Do you expect this is the worst of it, or could it get worse before it gets better?
Dr. Anderson: There is some seasonality to the disease. We would hope that if we can get to summer with hot weather and drier weather, that this will go away. That allows the industry to catch up with the new birds that are coming into flocks to boost production and bring down prices. Have we hit the peak yet in prices? I’m going to say probably not. There’s probably some more to go, because we continue to have outbreaks of the disease that get announced on more egg laying farms. I think we’re likely to still have some more outbreaks and still cut supplies.
