Legal Insurrection readers know I am a big fan of eggs, which are loaded with nutrition vital to health.
As I noted in a previous post, there is a serious avian flu pandemic that is killing off millions of our nation’s poultry supply. Reports are now surfacing about a massive increase in the cost of eggs.
For example, the latest report of the Producer Price Index, which shows how inflation is affecting business owners and producers, indicates the highest jump in the cost of eggs among the items in monitors.
The largest jump in food prices were for “eggs for fresh use,” where costs for businesses to supply their products and package them for everyday shoppers rose 161.3%. It was the only food item with a triple digit increase in price listed in the PPI.This means that the eggs used by bakers, fry cooks, and even on breakfast menus for fast-food joints are much more expensive compared to April 2021. The price for consumers was up too, with eggs 22.6% more expensive than in April 2021.
The Department of Agriculture’s Food Price Outlook for 2022 also looks grim for those of us who love omelettes and eggs-over-easy.
Farm-level egg prices increased by 110.1 percent in April 2022. The price increases followed the loss of millions of laying hens to highly pathogenic avian influenza, primarily in Iowa and the surrounding States. Farm-level egg prices are now predicted to increase between 73.5 and 76.5 percent in 2022.
This situation has not been helped by a massive fire that killed tens of thousands of chickens in Minnesota.
According to Forsman Farms website, the farm started in 1918, and now the fourth-generation family farm sells more than three million eggs a day to some of the nation’s largest retailers.“Overnight, a fire destroyed one of our barns at our Howard Lake farm. No one was injured and we are grateful that first responders were quickly on scene to put out the fire. Unfortunately, chickens were lost because of the fire. We are evaluating the extent of the damage – which appears to be confined to a single structure – as well as investigating the cause of the fire,” a Forsman Farms spokesperson said.
Additionally, the Russia-Ukraine war has resulted in price rises in fertilizer and other costs associated with egg production. Sweden and the United Kingdom are both reporting that production is being cut and that an egg shortage is possible.
Wheat, a key ingredient in chicken feed, has almost doubled in price because Russia and Ukraine produce about 30% of the global supply.Farmers are calling for a 40p increase in the cost of a dozen eggs to meet the rising costs.”We’re going to have a desperate egg shortage by Christmas if things don’t change,” said farmer David Sharples.
Speaking of Christmas, it will be interesting to see just how much a turkey will cost by the time we reach the 2022 holiday season. That is, if there is poultry available to buy. Under the Biden administration, you can’t make any assumptions.
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