There is something in the egg shortage. Bird flu is only half of history.

That’s part of EggAn attempt to explain why the Americans absolutely lost their heads on the prices of the eggs.

You are probably familiar with the history of egg shortage: the United States is in the middle of a very contagious avian flu epidemic. Millions of hens across the country have been wiped out, considerably reducing the number of eggs in the supply chain. This is what led to the $ 12 boxes, completely sterile egg sections with grocery store, from the surcharges applied to the omelettes of Waffle House and – if we are honest – the re -election of Donald Trump under a storm of indignation of consumers.

All this makes sense at one level, but Angela Huffman, responsible for the action of the farm – a non -profit organization that campaigns against the corporatization of the food system – there is something more fishermen. Perhaps, she said, avian flu is an easy scapegoat for what really happens. Perhaps the largest egg producers in the country use this opportunity to deactivate a fortune of breakfast. Huffman and his organization therefore began to investigate.

“We had noticed that the prices of the eggs had increased, but at the same time, the largest producers made their profits considerably increase,” said Huffman. “We thought, ok, if they just needed to increase prices to take into account the losses of their hens due to the flu, why do they earn five times more money? It was really strange for us.

According to Farm Action research, it is proven that the impact of avian flu on egg production has not been as omnipresent as consumers could think. Despite wiping infestations and mass euthanasia, the action of the farm alleys that the size of eggs’ fingertips in 2025 are, on average, only 5% smaller, on a monthly basis, in 2021. (Other reports put this number closer to 10%.) This is particularly true for the food of Cal-Maine. Huffman alleges that Cal-Maine continued to produce the same 1.1 billion eggs, year after year, despite the flu. However, Cal-Maine’s revenues have skyrocketed. According to a report in The Guardian, the company’s profits tripled this quarter compared to the same period last year, and in total, its margins increased by almost 800% since winter 2022.

“In other words, Cal-Maine did more in one quarter than what they did in an entire year before the avian epidemic of the 2022 flu,” said the group. In fact, they have done so many things that the company is currently the subject of a survey by the Ministry of Justice for an alleged price compensation, resulting in a 4% drop in its shares. “Egg producers and grocery stores can take advantage of the current avian influenza epidemic as an opportunity to force the offer or increase egg prices to increase profits,” a group of Democratic legislators wrote, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, in an open letter in January, according to the New York Times. A 2011 trial alleging pricing by some of the same egg producers led to a jury conclusion against producers in 2023.

The company did not respond to several requests for comments, but according to the Guardian Investigation, Cal-Maine’s financial documents argue that its production lines have a negligible effect on consumer spending. (“We do not sell eggs directly to consumers or fix the prices to which eggs are sold to consumers”, he said.) There could be a certain truth to this: like David Ortega, food economist at Michigan State University, told me, the egg producers have generally set their prices according to the studies carried out by various analytical companies that evaluate the supply and demand on the market.

One of these analytical companies is Urner Barry, who has encountered the controversy on his price aircraft in the past. Example: In 2020, New York state referred to Urne Barry in a prices focused on pandemic, alleging that large producers “use indexed prices to urinate Barry as justification to set their own prices for the sale of eggs”, regardless of their cost. (A spokesperson to Urne Barry rejected these statements, saying to the Guardian, in part, that “buyers and sellers are always free to transform at different prices.” “We do not fix the prices. We simply observe and report what is happening,” the company told me.

For his part, Ortega thinks that Cal-Maine may have been lucky and enjoy a windfall. “It is not surprising for me that Cal-Maine brings in record profits, because even when prices are increasing, people always buy eggs,” he said. “The company’s facilities are home to many birds. And if you have not been struck by an epidemic, while you are still faced with costs with biosecurity and things like that, you could benefit from these higher prices. This does not only apply to Cal-Maine, which applies to any supplier of the company. ”

Jadrian Wooten, another food economist who teaches Virginia Tech, added: “The very easy answer here is that during a shortage, if Cal-Maine does not increase the price of their eggs, they will have very cheap eggs, and people will buy too much of these eggs.

“It is a symptom of a more important problem: the consolidation of our food sector in a few hands,” Huffman told me. “These companies have a history of use of all kinds of disruption of the supply chain for the price of Gouge consumers.”

Unfortunately for us, it is unlikely that it changes anytime soon. Eggs are called “inelastic” products, which means that the rise in prices does not necessarily reduce consumption. As the Water Watch Food & Water report points out, 97% of American households buy eggs and have continued to do so despite the prices that are often twice as high. That these price increases come from normal market fluctuations or something more unfortunate, there is little incitement for companies to stop this sauce form.

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