What will egg prices look like ahead of Easter?
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
An agri-food economist at Purdue University says consumers can expect more “unprecedented” volatility when it comes to egg prices heading into Easter weekend.
Trey Malone, the chair for managerial economics and agribusiness at Purdue’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business, says while the average price of a dozen eggs has fallen to $4.90 this week, that drop is not likely to continue.
“We need to remember that the egg industry is extremely talented at predicting demand. It’s not like they forgot that Easter season is coming,” Malone said. “Usually they plan ahead and they develop some type of layer flock system that prevents that nasty spike in egg prices. Now this year, because we’ve had such a dramatic influence of the avian influenza in terms of the supply of eggs, it’s not unlikely to assume that we’ll see an increase in egg prices due to the Easter season.”
Egg producers across the country are feeling the strain from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. Malone said the virus has killed more than 160 million birds in the United States over the last few years.
Just this year, the virus has resulted in the depopulation of more than 8 million birds at egg production operations throughout Indiana.
“Keep in mind that to grow an egg we have to have a flock that usually takes about six months to develop,” Malone said. “So as we eliminate these birds, it takes six months to replace those layers, which can create these really nasty supply chain bottlenecks as we develop our egg supply here in the United States.”
Darrin Karcher, a poultry extension specialist at Purdue, adds that the biggest question that is facing commercial poultry production right now is how to continue to combat this virus and try to eradicate it or eliminate the potential of the virus coming into poultry operations.
“We are doing things such as increasing our biosecurity, and what I mean by that is being aware of the traffic, being aware of the people, and being aware of other wild birds that may be carrying the virus and coming into our commercial flocks that can ultimately result in them becoming sick,” Karcher said. “With this increase in biosecurity and the way that we’re doing things, this is how we continue to ensure that we have a safe food supply for the consumer.”
Karcher said officials expect a decrease in avian flu cases coming in the summer months. But that doesn’t mean the virus will necessarily go away entirely.
“Hopefully we are figuring out if we’re going to have a vaccine, if there are other mitigation or other ways that we can help to address the bird flu next time we see this, which unfortunately will be next fall following very similar to what we see with human flu, where we have a seasonality to it.”
Malone said consumers should continue to prepare for more volatility on egg prices even after Easter.
“We’ve had some fairly robust plans put forward from the federal government to try to mitigate some of this price volatility, but in general, I would anticipate seeing more of this volatility as we move forward throughout the year.”