“Get used to high egg prices,” The Atlantic blurbed Annie Lowry’s February 27 article, “it was a miracle they were low in the first place.”
Titled “It’s Weird That Eggs Were Ever Cheap,” it appears to have an agenda: prepare us for yet higher prices, or worse: no eggs.
“Consumers are furious,” explains Ms. Lowry, emphasizing that eggs are a very, very popular food. “Or at least they were, until a highly pathogenic form of bird flu spread to American flocks in 2022. Today, the Department of Agriculture is tracking 36 separate outbreaks across nine states. The disease has led to the death or culling of 27 million laying hens — nearly 10 percent of the nation’s commercial flock — in the past eight weeks alone.”
The culling of flocks — and which birds are selected — could potentially be the most controversial element of the story. Donald Trump, on the campaign trail last year, complained about the cull orders and promised to bring down egg prices fast.
But his administration’s new five point plan is no quick fix:
- subsidize on-farm biosecurity upgrades
- compensation to farmers forced to cull their flocks
- investing in bird-flu vaccines and therapeutics
- nixing some regulations
- increasing foreign imports.
That comes to $1.5 billion spending increases to lower egg prices!
But it was a jokey comment by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins that sent Trump critics into paroxysms. “I think the silver lining in all of this is, how do we solve for something like this?” said the Department of Agriculture head. “And people are sort of looking around, thinking, ‘Maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard,’ and it’s awesome.”
Ha ha.
But taking the joke as a serious proposal? The yolk’s on them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
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3 replies on “Egg Prices Crisis”
The Bird Flu, just like Covid, is being used to scare people.
The mass extermination of healthy birds (and now cows) must be a deliberate attempt to hurt food supply and drive prices higher.
The use of the PCR test at 45 cycles, which will detect anything in anything, followed by the killing of healthy birds and animals that obviously has immunity is pure insanity.
Years ago, there was a movement against soft boiled eggs and eggs served sunny side up, because raw or partially cooked eggs could still harbor salmonella. The same precautions used to guard against salmonella should also protect you from bird flu, according to researchers. Culling the flocks was probably overkill (no pun intended).
Finding bird flu in a flock of chickens (via the PCR test fraud) leads to killing millions of chickens.
Does that mean if one democrat gets bird flu we should kill all democrats?
Of course that is ridiculous.
But so is killing million of chickens.