Egg prices could reach new highs

Consumers have been complaining about the price of eggs in recent months, and according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) those high prices may reach new heights this year. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), or bird flu, is the main culprit for rising prices.

Egg prices were up 37% in December when compared to the same month in 2023, according to the USDA Food Price Outlook. For the year, prices are expected to spike another 20%.

Since February 2022, HPAI has been detected in more than 1,400 flocks affecting 149.96 million birds. Through the end of January, more than 19.63 million birds have been affected including 71 commercial flocks and 43 backyard flocks, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“The same similar thing happened at the end of 2022 and into 2023,” said Jada Thompson, associate professor and poultry economist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

“What you have is very tight supply,” she said. “We were down about 3% in egg layer supply at the time, and we’re down about 3% in supply right now.”

When supplies are stressed, it can cause customers to buy more than they normally would, which puts even more pressure on supply.

“We see the egg prices, and then consumers are responding,” said Thompson. “There’s a bit of people buying all the eggs because they’re concerned about the availability.”

While the season for bird flu cycles with spring and fall wildfowl migrations, the rhythm of the egg cycle has its own complexities. Thompson said the retail cycle moves with the holidays when consumers tend to buy more eggs. And then there’s biology.

“The high demand tends to coincide with periods of the year where egg laying kind of drops off a little, due to it being colder and the amount of light changes. There are hormonal effects to egg laying,” she said. “Then in summer, the bird flu starts ebbing and then it picks up in the fall.”

When bird flu is detected, the flocks need to be depopulated because the current strain of the disease has such a high mortality rate. Whether it’s turkeys, broilers or egg layers, it takes time to replace the birds — “there’s also kind of a bit of a biological lag in that price recovery system and for the supply chain.”

Thompson said there weren’t as many cases of bird flu in the spring of 2023.

“We didn’t have as many cases of bird flu,” she said. “We didn’t have as many birds out of the system, and so prices kind of recovered, and those stories fell away, and we don’t think about it.”

However, 2025 is reminding consumers of what was forgotten in the summer of 2023.

“We started seeing a bit more of an uptick. We saw a little bit more shocks to the market,” Thompson said.

For comparison in 2022, 43 million table egg layers were affected by HPAI. The next year 12 million layers were affected, and in 2024, 38 million layers were impacted.

“Right now? We’re already at 13 million in 2025,” Thompson said.

However, Thompson expects the supply will recover.

“Our food supply is healthy. Our egg supply is healthy,” she said. “I can tell you that the eggs are coming back on the market.”