The Threat to America’s Bacon and Egg Breakfasts
Between bird flu and fuel costs, egg and meat production plummet.
The United States has few dishes more iconic than bacon-and-egg breakfasts.
This classic dish is now being threatened by disease and inflation.
In a recent infectious disease analysis, I touched upon the shocking avian flu crisis. This poultry pandemic is killing off America’s breakfast egg supply.
Production of eggs in the US plummeted in April as millions of hens were killed during one of the worst-ever outbreaks of avian influenza, signaling that retail egg prices will stay high after a surge of about 40% this year.
Table egg production declined 3.9% to 7.55 billion, while the number of egg-laying birds fell 5.3% from a year ago, a US Department of Agriculture report showed Friday. Both are the lowest levels since 2015, the last time the poultry industry was hit with a major bird flu outbreak.
Inflation makes it harder for Americans to obtain bacon to go with their eggs. Tommy Porter, who runs a livestock and cattle farm in Mount Pleasant, N.C., recently explained the costs of farm operations (which are directly tied to Biden’s lack-of-energy policies).
I guess the No. 1 factor would be fuel. Fuel touches everything we do, not only the tractors, the equipment that we run on the farm. And we burn more fuel this time of year than we do most any other time. But everything we get – fertilizer, chemicals, seed – everything is as much as two to four times what it was a year ago. So those prices are just hitting us really hard, and we’re not able to pass our cost on. Farmers are price takers, not price makers.
Well, farmers, we – when we sell a product, our commodities, whether it’s livestock or grain or corn or whatever, the price is set by whatever the market is. And just take, for instance, cattle. All of our input cost to raise these cattle are costing us anywhere from two to three times more than it did a year ago, and the price of cattle is the same thing as it was a year ago.
This might explain why the Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that commercial U.S. red meat production was down 3% from last year.
That was due to slower slaughter rates for cattle and hogs, which canceled out higher average live weights.
Beef was reported at 2.327 billion pounds, 1% lower than last year, with a slaughter of 2.183 million head, also 1% lower, and an average live weight of 1,373 pounds, a gain of seven pounds.
Pork was pegged at 2.202 billion pounds, a drop of 6%, with a slaughter of 10.081 million head, a decline of 7%, and an average live weight of 293 pounds, three heavier.
The year-to-date total for commercial red meat production is 18.517 billion pounds, 2% behind the year ago pace.
As Biden continues to bumble, bacon and eggs may become a luxury meal for most Americans.
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Comments
The 2 egg, hash brown smothered/covered, sausage with Texas toast and a cup of coffee at Waffle house was $11.58 yesterday. Last June 1st the same meal was just under $8. I wonder where it will be next year.
FUCK Joe Biden
Next year it will be 1 egg, hash brown covered with nothing, 1/2 toast and 1/2 cup coffee for $23.16.
All by design. Biden is just there to read from a large teleprompter, text that is written for him by Obama’s inner circle surrounding Biden (Susan Rice, Anita Dunn, etc.)
Jill Biden is the trash acting as a middle person,
In 2014 Obama asked banks to shift lending from Oil Companies to Green Energy to Save the Planet. In 7 years lending fell from $90 billion to $42 billion.
No investment > No drilling > No natural gas > No Fertilizer > No food.
The Road to Hell paved with Green Intentions.
Now 1 in 4 people on the planet is facing 5 years of chronic Starvation.
God bless. I remember my collegiate years, and Mondo’s, the 24h gypsy restaurant, in Boston (gypsy because it never had signage, would pull up stakes with no notice and suddenly appear somewhere entirely different, and never, ever advertised).
Two eggs any style; two bacon, ham, or sausage; hash browns; two toast; OJ or coffee: $1… but only between 11 PM and 6 AM.
Assuming your Waffle House is open. The formerly 24-hour Waffle House nearest me now closes at 9pm.
The vegans and vegetarians are salivating. If the ObaMao bin Biden Regime Term 3 continues, the restaurant menus will be limited to one dish, dandelion salad with no dressing $19.95.
free range for the win. orange yolks. got 2 neighbors that give me all I can eat of them
text sent 30 minutes later 2 dozen showing up tomorrow morning. free eggs for life cause I help these people with anything they need anytime.
you get what you give.
Once you eat those, you really don’t want to go back to factory-farmed eggs
Try to remember the month before Biden became President. Gas was cheap, diesel was cheap, eggs were cheap, and there were dozens of types of baby formula readily available.
Only 200K people had died from the Wuhan Flu, and three highly potent vaccines had been certified in record time.
Afghanistan was ready for a drawdown of troops, and Ukraine was a prosperous, independent nation with beautiful cities.
After less than a year and half of the Biden administration, everything has crashed. The prices of gasoline, diesel, and eggs are at all-time highs, you can’t get baby formula for any price, a million people have died from Wuhan coronavirus, and both Afghanistan and Ukraine are in the toilet.
Thanks, Joe, and your Donkey friends.
And now the RINOs are coming out of the woodwork trying to act shocked that the drooling moron isn’t a ‘moderate’ and the ‘we’ were all fooled.
That’s their tell, when they start bullshitting about how ‘we’ were fooled and couldn’t have known better.
Any Republican in any leadership position that is not Donald Trump or Rick De Santis or Rand Paul is completely suspect, and should NEVER be trusted with GOP leadership again.
How Ronna Romney McSwamp remains the head of the GOP is an obscenity.
I listened to a speech by Sen. Tim Scott a couple of days ago and was blown away. That guy is really good. Any young. Gotta get him a leadership position.
He’s really good. But very low-key (his personality seems to be low-key, so it’s not likely he’ll fire up crowds, but then, maybe if people just listen to him . . . ).
@fuzzy He was very entertaining and quotable in a Mark Twain way. “Have you ever drifted aimlessly and ended up in a good place?” Has his own charming way and comes off as genuine. At first, I thought I was listening to Dave Chappelle (without the cussing and N-words). He connects with the audience. I don’t know how he is in large crowds though.
I grew up with Steven Jobs, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope. Today there are no Jobs, no Cash and no Hope.
Dear Lord please don’t let anything happen to Kevin Bacon.
LOL, +10
It’s Un-American to deprive the citizens of this great country of their bacon and eggs. Keeping people on the bare edge of starvation while they dine well is the final outcome.
Well at least you live in Alaska where things are cheap.
Alaska is neither cheap or invulnerable ….
I had a sausage egg McMuffin today and it was delicious. That’s almost bacon and eggs.
This poultry pandemic is killing off America’s breakfast egg supply.
More like government bureaucrats who are killing the egg supply with their “muh bird flu” fear porn and scare tactics.
Out of an abundance of caution….
“If it saves just one life…” 🙄
It’s a real thing, this influenza. The poultry forums I’m on have been talking about it. Odd how all 4 North American flyways had influenza outbreaks this spring. What a coincidence!
The bad thing is if there is an outbreak in your geographic area the gov comes in and destroys all poultry, commercial or home. They are really strict. Kind of puts a crimp in “raising your own”!
They have to know you have birds at home…
“They’re Norwegian Blues. They’re just pinin’ for the fjords.”
All part of FJB’s manufactured food crisis. Never forget: They want you to drink poop water and eat bugs & frankenfood while they sip chardonnay and dine on Kobe beef.
We need to start applying wind and solar to other things besides fuel. Things like pharmaceuticals and fertilizer. And why don’t we have electric farm machinery? And can’t we make bacon and eggs from wind and solar? There must be a way. Those scientists can do anything. Come up with another hockey stick chart showing us how to do that.
So far, all of their recommendations seem to lead us into death, disease, pestilence and starvation. The only solution seems to involve taking our freedoms away. Let’s try something else. This Deconstruction Era idea is just not working out for me.
Breakfast now brought to you by your friends at……. Soylent Green.
WEF: “To serve Mankind”
It was “To Serve Man”. https://www.vudu.com/content/movies/details/The-Twilight-Zone-To-Serve-Man/261215
I believe Soylent Green was first introduced as Beyond People but didn’t catch on so they renamed it.
We can make bacon from wind energy… just teach pigs to fly.
And if you can get them to fly around the wind turbines, it’ll be “pre-sliced” bacon!
We live in the countryside. Our eggs come from down the road. Two freezers full of disassembled beef from a rancher and pork from a gal we know who raises them. Big garden for produce.
“”all of their recommendations seem to lead us into death, disease, pestilence and starvation.””
As they say, that’s a feature, not a bug.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the Irish poor seldom ate their own hens’ eggs, but instead sold them to help pay the landlord’s rent on their small holdings.
Cohabiting with hens was common. By day the fowl foraged outside by themselves, but at night it was vital to protect them from wandering foxes.
Since a hen house required payment of additional rent, it was cheaper to bring the whole flock inside the family home at night. There they rested along with the family pig.
The habit of keeping poultry indoors gave rise to the Irish legendary claim to being the first people to pair eggs with bacon. The old tale tells how an Irish peasant was frying bacon in a pan over an open fire one day. A lazy hen was roosting on the cross-beams above. The hen supposedly dropped an egg, which fell against the side of the pan.
The shell split, spilling into the pan on top of the bacon. Rather than wasting the bacon the woman served it, egg and all, to her hungry husband. He returned to work, proclaiming the deliciousness of the fried combination. Word spread far and wide, and soon the perfect pairing of bacon and eggs was known the world over.
One has to wonder: Is this the goal of The Globalists?
Being diabetic with high BP, my bacon and egg days are pretty much behind me. I remember with fondness the days when we had a 24-hour operation with an on-site dining facility that served breakfast anytime. Eggs, bacon, sausage, SOS, hash browns, all you could eat for $.20 (for breakfast hours – lunch and dinner were more expensive). Yeah, 20 cents.
20 cents all you can eat???
Military dining hall. Those were the days. I could eat 4000 calories a day and not gain an ounce.
Ha. That’s awesome.
??? Bacon and eggs are both proteins; shouldn’t make problems for a diabetic OR a hypertensive. It’s the toast and coffee-sugar that get you.
Not for high BP.
I’d think the zero carbohydrates in both bacon and eggs ideal for a diabetic.
Fat and cholesterol. According to my doctor.
America has had many egg shortages before, for whatever reason the market is somewhat cyclical and it does not help that middle size chicken and egg concerns are disappearing as mega-producers take over the market leaving the independents to small markets such as organic raisers.
Morningstar breakfast strips aren’t bad, if you don’t overnuke them, as a bacon substitute.
Blasphemy!!
I would expect meat production to go down because people just aren’t buying it as much. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if more items on the grocery butcher rack are expiring and being thrown away. LOSD
Our rancher beef is grass fed. This makes is leaner than grain fed. Cooking tactics are a bit different for everything but burger. (More about that later.) If it’s a grass fed steak or roast, it has to be marinated or it will dry out FAST while being cooked.
So yesterday, at long last, I cooked a 6 pound rump roast. Followed the recipe exactly. Used a Nesco electric roaster, which I’ve used before. The recipe said 2 hours at 350. The meat temp should be 140. Then cut the temp to 225 for 2 more hours.
Result: A very well-done rump roast. We prefer medium rare (me) or medium (him), but this was well done. Dry. We scarfed it down last night, then I sliced the rest and stuck it in the fridge and freezer (for some), and today a friend said to stick it in the crockpot with barbecue sauce and cook it until it falls apart, then make sammiches and chipped beef on rice.
We shall see. I have a longstanding principle: “Thou shalt not throw away food.” I was raised with stories about starving children in the third world. It’s in my rat brain. I am the Leftovers King. Throwing away food is immoral to me. I hope the crockpot method works.
Likewise. The Bride is a WONDERFUL cook unafraid to try a new recipe. And likewise, we don’t chuck food unless it’s growing hair of its own. The freezer is a godsend.
.
It’s truly baked in my brain: Do Not Throw Away Food. I know that it could seem self-righteous, and maybe there’s a tinge of it in there, but it goes deep. Do Not Throw Away Food.
A couple years ago, I saw all this shit coming. I’m no clairvoyant, but I have inherited my father’s gift for long-term thinking. Kill me now. So I ordered a freezer from the mom n pop appliance store in a town 12 miles away.
“I have to warn you that it might not get here in time,” she said. Explained that freezers were hard to come by. The usual reasons. I paid the full freight in advance, because she said that if I found one elsewhere she’d reverse the charge. Hey, it’s where I got our Speed Queen washer. I will leave it at that rather than launch into an Ode to Speed Queen.
I had ordered a half beef from the rancher for delivery in the fall, delivery meaning delivery to the local cutter: Billy Bob’s in Elgin, Oregon. Slogan: “You can’t beat our meat.” I called them and laid it out: We have a freezer on order but it might not come in time. Can you store it if we need to? I will be willing to pay for storage.
Can you live with us taking it home where we have more freezer space? Hell yes, I answered. Sometimes you just know when you’re dealing with honesty. There’ll be no charge if you do it, just stay in touch. No problem, I replied, and thank you.
Three days before the freezer was due, I get a call. Your freezer is on back order for 9 months, but we had a backup. Want a Crosley instead of a Maytag? You bet! The Crosley (made in Thailand, like the Maytag I think) was cheaper. Deducting the delivery charge, I was still ahread of the game. Thank you!
Picked up the beef on time. They named the steer after me. Half beef for us, half beef for a friend. Now in the freezer. Country living. Folks, I have been all over America, no shit. It really doesn’t get any better, on average, than Eastern Oregon, a part of America The Beautiful that’s not on the national parks circuit, and thank God for that.
If you’re ever in trouble and have to depend on the kindness of strangers, have it be east of the Cascades. I have been in all 50 states, from sea to shining sea. As upset as I get, I think of the people I’ve met. And I think of Eastern Oregon, top of the list. Good food, too.
Folks, be pessimistic. God knows I am. But always remember where you are. This is America, and this country is full of incredible people. All you have to do is slow down a bit and listen. The Brotherhood of the Civilized is alive and well. Beleaguered, but far, FAR from defeated. Remember that.
p.s.: Correction. I ordered a whole beef. Our part was half, and our friend’s was half. I don’t know where the other commenters come from, but that shit matters out here.
About that Brotherhood. A couple weeks ago, I was talking to our vehicle mechanic. One thing led to another, and he told me that when the virus hit bad, he wound up giving away about $10,000 worth of tires to people hard up against it.
You had to be there. No reason for him to have blown air up my pants legs. I put out my hand and we shook, and I said, “Paco (he’s Mexican), you are part of the Brotherhood of the Civilized. We wear a mark visible only to each other. We are why human beings still exist. Welcome to the Brotherhood.”
He liked that, and said he’d remember it.
I wouldn’t know about bacon, but the price of eggs has shot up in the last month or two. I’m used to paying around $1 or $1.25 a dozen, maybe $1.50 if prices are high; a few weeks ago it went up to $3, and this week it was down to $2.70.
Many of us thank you for refraining from bacon so that there is more for us.
If it helps, I also don’t drink baby formula….
🙂
Christian baby blood, on the other hand… 🙂
Denny’s has been serving an all-you-can-eat with eggs, hash browns and pancakes. For an extra dollar you can add bacon, though I haven’t bothered with that. I think this offer is supposed to last until June 21, so you might want to check the Denny’s closest to you.