Eggs come from chickens. So why are eggs expensive and not chicken?
Avian flu has caused the price of eggs to go up. But eggs come from chickens, and chicken prices have remained steady. So why are only eggs more expensive?
The short answer is that there are chickens for meat (broilers) and chickens for eggs (layers), and they’re not the same: They’re raised separately and have different lifespans.
In fact, for the past several decades, broilers and layers have comprised two entirely different industries in the U.S.
“There are two different genetic breeds,” said Sandra Vijn, the managing director of Kipster USA, which supplies eggs to Kroger, which operates more grocery stores in the United States than any other corporation.
“One is raised to grow as fast and thick as possible within six weeks to go to market as meat, and the other is bred to lay as many eggs with as little feed for as long as possible, and those hens live up to 90 weeks,” Vijn said.
Avian flu, generally cited as the cause of the recent egg shortage, affects basically all birds, you might point out. That’s true, but it has overwhelmingly affected egg-laying chickens.
“Of the total number of birds affected over the three years of the outbreak, only about 8% have been broiler chickens and almost 78% egg-laying chickens,” said Tom Super, the senior vice president of communications of the National Chicken Council, which represents the broiler industry, citing data provided by the USDA.
That doesn’t mean broilers are immune to avian influenza, which affects both types of chicken, many types of birds, and other species. “If a flock gets infected, the whole flock needs to go,” Vijn said, and broilers “are easily replaced.”
Egg-laying hens are more time-consuming and expensive to produce. A hen will start laying eggs only after 21 to 24 weeks of age, which is three or four times the average lifespan of a broiler.
“Kipster has three hen houses in the U.S., with each housing 24,000 hens,” Vijn said. “They lay on average one egg per day, or six per week. After 90 weeks, they’ve worked so hard to produce eggs almost daily that their bodies become too old, their eggs become brittle, and they’re replaced with younger hens.”
In the Netherlands, where Kipster started, the old hens go to a slaughter facility and are turned into sausage or meatballs for retail. “Traditionally in the U.S., chickens were eaten after they were done laying eggs,” Vijn said. “They were dual purpose, but in the 1960s, the market started to specialize.”
It’s worth noting where egg prices have gone up. At big grocery stores, “egg prices have always been oddly low, compared to the price of most proteins,” said Catt Fields White, founder of Farmers Market Pros, an organization of farmers market managers and vendors.
“This has been due to a combination of them being loss leaders, and the contract farms that exploit farmers and chickens by crowding birds tightly indoors,” White said. “That’s an environment where bird flu spreads quickly.”
In 2019 — pre-pandemic, the last time there was some semblance of normality in food pricing — the average cost of a dozen eggs at grocery stores was $1.40. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $2.02. Recently, they have hit an all-time-high average of $5.90 per dozen.
In the past two weeks, I purchased a dozen eggs from the Rittenhouse Farmer’s Market for $8 — $2 more than I was paying last year from the same farmers and, as I recall, $3 more than in 2019.
“Farmers market egg prices generally haven’t risen, [but] they have often been a bit higher than at grocery chains, and now the big guys are having to get closer to the real cost of eggs. Smaller farmers usually means smaller flocks with more room to roam, so the birds are less likely to get sick,” White said.
“Cooking at home, two eggs makes a serving for most people, and even if eggs are $7 or $8 a dozen, that protein serving is slightly over $1. Compare that to most meat or fish, and it’s still a bargain. So it’s not so much the price, as what we’ve been trained to think the price should be.”
For comparison, a pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast is about $4.11 per pound, which yields four servings — meaning that in terms of serving size, farmers market eggs are the same price as conventional, factory-farmed supermarket chicken.
One reason some smaller farms have been able to better maintain their prices is because they’re more nimble than enormous factory farms and can adjust their operations more readily.
Joe Jurgielewicz & Son, a third-generation duck farm based in Hamburg, Berks County, that works with dozens of local family farms to supply virtually all the restaurants in Philadelphia’s Chinatown that serve duck — it delivers 10,000 birds a week there — has implemented a number of protocols to stem the spread of avian flu.
“It’s extremely contagious, and the possibilities for transmission are endless,” said Joey Jurgielewicz, the grandson. “The last barn that got it had 12,000 birds that were infected.”
The company’s protocols include spacing birds apart, ventilation, and contact tracing. “We try to keep our barns ventilated properly, and feed or supply trucks deliver only to one farm at a time,” Jurgielewicz said. “They can’t go to multiple ones [on a delivery route], so we can control the spread of disease.”
The price of ducks from Joe Jurgielewicz & Son’s has remained steady throughout the avian flu pandemic — about $20 retail per duck at Whole Foods — and has been impacted more by weather affecting the price of corn and soybeans, which are fed to the ducks, Jurgielewicz said.
The price of eggs is coming down, though it may take time to be reflected in the supermarket. Sudden falls in prices of eggs in recent weeks have raised questions for egg producers about having kept prices artificially high, leading to an investigation by the Justice Department.
Egg prices have benefited at least one business. Sales are through the roof for San Francisco-based Just Egg, which makes a mungbean-based egg replacement. Just Egg is reporting five times its typical sales and has been fielding calls from restaurants, airlines, and retailers.
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