Why are eggs so expensive in California right now? What to know about latest US shortage
Brandie Gutierrez was thrilled to find eggs in stock at her local Rancho San Miguel on Monday night. Even better, they only cost about $4 for a dozen brown eggs – the lowest price she’s seen lately.
“It’s ridiculous,” Gutierrez said of the egg shortage and the ballooning prices. “I usually have to go to multiple stores to get everything I need. Making another trip on top of that just to find eggs is really extra.”
Californians like Gutierrez have recently found empty shelves and astounding prices in their grocery store’s egg cases. The average price for a dozen large eggs in California hovered around $6.72 as of this week, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The cause? A national egg shortage induced by an outbreak of highly infectious avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu.
“There’s a huge shortage of layer chickens,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation.
The outbreak has killed over 57.8 million birds across the country since early 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and most of them are egg-laying hens.
Bird flu hasn’t struck any California egg producers yet. But growers worry that migration season could contaminate their coops and ranches.
“They’re very nervous right now,” Mattos said. “Just one little bird that flies into a coop or a ranch can cause a big problem.”
California sources about 40-50% of its eggs from out-of-state providers like Iowa and Ohio, Mattos said, which were hit hard by the flu outbreak. While producers across the country are working hard to rebuild their populations, it takes a few months for the chickens to mature enough to be able to produce eggs.
The Golden State’s commitment to cage-free-only eggs has also pushed prices higher for Californians.
In 2018, voters overwhelmingly approved the animal welfare initiative known as Proposition 12. The law introduced minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, breeding pigs and calves raised for veal. Pork producers challenged the law, saying it violated interstate commerce laws, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in October.
Since the law went into effect last January, all eggs sold in California have to be produced in cage-free settings. But cage-free production takes much more space than conventional egg production, and California producers aren’t able to keep up with demand.
“They’re selling everything they can possibly grow,” Mattos said.
On top of the outbreak, the state now has to contend with at least seven other states that passed similar cage-free laws in the last five years. Colorado and Washington’s bans on conventional eggs took effect this year on Jan. 1, placing even more strain on the West Coast’s demand for cage-free eggs.
The egg shortage is especially hard for lower-income families in California who’ve long relied on eggs as a low-cost source of protein. Beneficiaries of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, face strict rules on what kinds of eggs they can buy. Only a dozen large, white, cage-free eggs are eligible for WIC dollars. Historically, those have been the cheapest option at most stores, and often are the first to sell out.