The egg prices rise under pressure as outdated supply chains under pressure

In America there may be no more critical problem in America than the worth of food.

So if that The price for eggs rose from 2024 to 2025 by over 40%It became a major news story in Colorado and across the country.

officer And the media The accused high egg prices for bird flu outbreaks and said that the outbreak in supply chains would cut back prices. Egg prices fell within the USA in early March 2025, but these trends are probably reversed Due to the upper seasonal demand during Easter and Passahfroh.

Rising prices and market volatility have led to the food costs increased to 11.4% of the American income available. The largest percentage since 1991.

Arrest of those rising costs, as I argue in My 2023 bookmeans Reinvent supply chains To deal with the growing supply, demand and price volatility that has created uncertainties for consumers for the reason that Covid 19 pandemic.

I even have described global supply chains and introductory chains, especially within the United States as “as”. “efficiently broken. ““ “I mean that they strive to supply low prices from scale effects, but there is no such thing as a sufficient resilience to create stability.

Without fixing the systemic weaknesses in supply chains, I consider that great health and economic disorders will proceed to occur in Colorado, national and everywhere in the world.

Cage -free eggs

Colorado faces a double strike that affects the ice prices.

It is one in all nine countries with one Cage -free egg mandatefor the eggs sold within the state come from cage -free facilities. It was shown that the regulation increased Price for eggs by as much as 50%.

In the past twenty years, cages -free egg laws have been adopted in countries comparable to consumers More concerned in regards to the well -being of livestock. What this implies, varies from state to state, for the reason that term shouldn’t be regulated by a federal authority. In Colorado, the chickens have to be housed in a cage -free system with egg sewing in a cage -free system not less than 1 square foot Usable space per hen.

Colorado is the twenty eighth largest egg producer within the USAFar behind the center west like Iowa, Indiana and Ohio, but there are a couple of big producers like Fresh farms tomorrowin addition to smaller ones like that Colorado Egg Producers AssociationA set of seven family -run farms.

Colorado The cage -free egg law got here into force in January 2025 – around the identical time Consumers noticed naked egg shelves In their supermarkets. Many consumers and a few chosen Republicans in Colorado accused the cage -free law.

Nevada withdraws on his cage -free egg mandate To take care of the challenge of unaffordable egg prices.

However, cage -free laws usually are not the major driver for increasing egg prices. As I discovered in my research. Like many others, the egg supply chain have to be reinvented to be able to compensate for price, scaling, reliability and stability.

Supply -chain problems

What increases the costs of eggs and other consumer goods is the concentration of the manufacturers. The Covid 19 pandemic showed how vulnerable prices and provide chains are.

Five years ago this month, when pandemic began, Many products weren’t available and dearer.

In 2022, a crucial product recall from Similac led to A baby formula deficiency within the USA. The baby formulas market is strongly concentrated, with 4 corporations being answerable for around 90% of the domestic market. A big -scale facility that produced the newborn formula Unhygienic conditions and contaminated products. When the nation was with the Pandemic supply chain problems in keeping with the shortage of pandemic supply chain problems.

Then in early 2024, The supplies from insulin ran briefly Due to production problems with Eli Lilly, one in all the three corporations which are answerable for over 90% of the US insulin market.

And within the second half of 2024, Hospitals couldn't get enough IV fluid Due to break by Hurricane Helene at a Baxter factory in North Carolina, which produces roughly 60% of IV fluids within the USA, this factory was published by Puerto Rico to North Carolina Because of the results of the hurricane Maria This was damaged by the island in 2017.

In all of those cases, the provision chain was easy to interrupt as a result of the dependence on some large manufacturers. In 2025, bird flu and eggs were just one other example of the “efficiently broken” supply chain of America.

Bird flu and costs of eggs

The top within the USA Five egg manufacturers are answerable for 40% of the chickensWith CAL Maine food in Mississippi alone, answerable for 13% of total US production.

A production plant within the USA on average can accommodate 75,000 to 500,000 chickens. Large facilities can house house Over 4 million. The mass production of eggs from these facilities implies that eggs are inexpensive for American consumers in stable times. Before the Covid 19 pandemic, eggs within the USA never exceeded $ 3 for a dozenAnd it was an inexpensive grocery solution in comparison with processed foods.

However, this scale and efficiency are at the worth of resilience during a outbreak of bird flu. Larger farms form the next risk of viral outbreak, which ends up in that Need to shrug thousands and thousands of birds And an increased risk of viral replication and mutation.

The solution can increase prices

Political decision -makers want Reduce the spread of diseases in American egg factories to alleviate the spread of bird flu. However, these measures are expensive.

Factory farms increase the Potential for viruses to spread quickly and even mutate. Therefore, bird flu is a more serious forerunner for the disorder of the provision chain as a hurricane or product recall since it has the potential to create a crisis for public health.

An answer to limit the spread of the bird flu is closed Regulate the variety of chickens permitted in a single facility. This would result in smaller and more farms within the USA, but in addition to higher consumer prices.

This solution would reflect other countries comparable to Canada, through which the common size of the systems is far smaller than within the USA and Eggs and poultry cost significantly more. That is why Canada has the provisions of the agreement on the agreement on the USA-Mexico-Canada quotas and tariff protection of American corporations that flood its market Eggs and poultry that will cost consumers two to 3 times less.

But in March 2025, The price for eggs in Canada is 50% cheaper As an egg within the United States since the country didn’t suffer the identical damage to bird flu.

After Canadian leadership, no egg prices would lead as little as huge factory farms, nevertheless it would protect American consumers from the periodic price shocks brought on by diseases or localized weather events that disturb the provision.

Despite the chance of a crisis of public health, American consumers now not wish to pay for eggs – and Your leaders have promised You don't need to need to.