The nation’s egg shortage could continue for another year, even though prices have slightly declined from record highs in recent weeks.
That’s the word from Dale Barnett, executive director of the Shelbyville-based Tennessee Poultry Association, an organization that supports, educates and promotes the sustainability of the state’s integrated broiler/breeder industry.
Since the outbreak of the extremely contagious bird flu – officially known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza – more than 44 million chickens have been lost in the worst outbreak of the deadly disease.
Prices have soared at grocery stores in the last few months as product disappeared from shelves. Restaurants are paying nearly triple for cases of eggs, the price skyrocketing from $33 a case to nearly $100 per case, several Nashville restaurant owners and officials say.
A Jan. 17 weekly market update from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that while the large shell egg market dipped 10.5% in a week-to-week comparison (from $5.25 to $4.70, a 55-cent reduction), the average price for a dozen eggs has risen 198.8% since this time in 2022.
Barnett says the shortage didn’t happen overnight and won’t end overnight.
“Based on the wild bird migration patterns, the ongoing highly pathogenic bird flu situation is predicted to continue for another year and the losses to the egg-laying hen population could continue,” Barnett says.
“It takes approximately 5-6 months to first hatch and then grow pullets to egg-producing age to replace depopulated flocks, due to the bird flu. Breeder operations may not always be in a position to readily meet this demand, adding to further delays.”
Nashville-based Midtown Café owner Randy Rayburn and chef Max Pastor say they hope that’s not the case.
“It’s really been primarily caused by avian flu and the killing off of millions of birds or layers, not fryers. The chicken probably had some of the highest increases during the last 34 months of COVID,” Rayburn says.
“In the last month, because of the bird flu, they have killed 4 million chickens,” Pastor says. “For now, because of that problem they’ve got with the sickness of the chickens, this has meant an increase for the price of the eggs.
“We are in a critical situation … and we hope that they don’t keep getting worse.”
Craig Clifft, general manager at Nashville’s Elliston Place Soda Shop, was asked if he saw a light at the end of the egg shortage tunnel.
“I kind of liken it to the lumber industry where all the lumber prices went up all through COVID as everybody was doing things,” Clifft says. “People will start finding other ways (to deal with the problem).
“Either they’ll start dropping eggs off the menu, or people will stop eating the eggs that they made. I think that there’s a point where the consumer says, ‘Enough is enough. I’ll do something else. I’m going to have oatmeal instead of eggs.’”
Bettina Hamblin, owner of The Farmacy in Knoxville, compares the egg shortage to other food shortages during the COVID era. They all have an impact on what the market will bear.
“In the past, we’ve had the beef crisis or the chicken crisis or any number of things that happened during COVID. It does have a really big impact,” she says. “That price has to be transferred directly passed on to the consumer.”
Hamblin says coping with the pandemic “has been a very sort of on-again, off-again (time). It feels like you get hit out of nowhere with something brand-new that you’ve never had to deal with before,” she says.
“It takes you a second to get your bearings and you have to think outside of the box to come up with a solution. And you do and you keep moving forward. And you have about 10 seconds to breathe before the next wave of crazy hits. So it’s been very emotionally exhausting, in talking to other owners.
“It’s hard to do that kind of mental gymnastics all the time – from starting with food costs to the labor issues that we’ve struggled with. Business is just very inconsistent.”