If you live in the US, and you’ve been tracking the price of eggs, you’ve probably experienced some sticker shock. The national average price for a dozen eggs in December 2024 was $4.15, and prices are still rising in January. What’s happening?
An ongoing bird flu epidemic has forced farmers to kill millions of egg-laying hens, leading to a serious shortage. The low supply of eggs means customers end up paying quite a bit more than usual at the supermarket. In some places, eggs now cost more than double what they did six months ago.
Though you can find a substitute for eggs in many cases, even if you’re baking, it can still be frustrating to go without this kitchen staple. We’ll explain the bird flu’s impact on egg supplies and discuss when you might start to see the price of eggs go down.
Read more: Raw Cat Food Linked to Bird Flu — A Vet Shares How to Protect Your Pets From the Virus
Why are egg prices so high right now?
This spike in egg prices has been driven by a virulent strain of bird flu that caused the death of 20 million egg-laying chickens in the last quarter of 2024.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the bird flu has resulted in close to 100 million chickens, turkeys and other poultry being killed since early 2022. Most of the birds culled to stop the epidemic have been egg-laying hens, causing the price of eggs to skyrocket and availability to plummet.
Bird flu is caused by avian influenza Type A viruses, which spread among waterfowl and can infect other wild birds, domestic poultry and other animals. Though bird flu rarely infects humans, the current outbreak is responsible for 67 human cases in the US and one death, as of this writing.
Will the bird flu mean that egg prices stay high?
That depends. Severe winter weather has been one factor in the recent price spike, but it seems to be bird flu that’s causing the overall price increase. The most recent USDA Egg Market Overview report, published Jan. 10, shows that the average price for a dozen eggs in California rose to a whopping $8.97. California has been one of the states hit hardest by bird flu.
The drop in supply of eggs from bird flu is also leading to empty shelves in supermarkets, and some grocery stores have started limiting the amount of eggs that customers are allowed to purchase.
There is some good news, though: The USDA is projecting that egg prices will start to return to normal by April 2025. According to its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, the price will drop back down to $2.50 per dozen in the second quarter of 2025, and down to $2.10 in the third quarter. Still, that means eggs are likely to remain expensive throughout the winter.
What happened in 2015 when bird flu made egg prices spike?
It’s not the first time bird flu has caused egg prices to rise dramatically. Back in late 2014 to June 2015, an earlier bird flu pandemic in the US caused the price of eggs to nearly double.
According to the USDA, more than 50 million chickens were killed by the bird flu or euthanized during those seven months, causing the price of a dozen grade A large eggs in the New York market to spike from $1.29 in April 2015 to $2.61 in August. That price didn’t revert back down to its former average until early 2016.
The USDA called the 2014-2015 bird flu epidemic “the largest poultry health disaster in US history,” but the current bird flu epidemic that started in 2022 is even larger — more than 13 million chickens have been affected in the past 30 days alone.
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