The price of eggs in America cannot be explained by inflation alone

—- 36 eggs still 6,400won! —-

We keep a small flock of backyard hens. Our feed prices went up by about 50%, but that was negligible for us given the retail price of eggs and how little commercial feed we buy.

I think many homes would benefit from even a few birds, which can be fed almost exclusively from table scraps. It’s a win/win. Chickens compost for you and keep the food from going in a landfill, and you get eggs.

This article has no analysis, insight, or data. It has a few singular datums, but doesn't establish any relations or context.

Unless I missed it in a one page article.

This is just click-bait without the annoying pop-ups.

Is it? The only source they cite for the claim of price-gouging is a group that's against large scale animal production and GMOs. They've got their own reasons to make the accusation. Honestly, it's probably true, but then they discuss meat production where there are definitely some illegal trust activities going on and say that that group has not seen the same increase in prices.

Do we not remember the last time avian flu hit the country's egg production hard? The price of eggs jumped massively. Once you identify avian flu in a flock the size that these facilities house, you're talking thousands or tens of thousands of chickens culled. A battery chicken lays an egg a day. That's thousands of eggs not being produced every day until those hens can be replaced. Add in inflation and I'm going to need to see some actual numbers if the author's going to claim that those factors aren't enough to explain the price jump.

They also somehow missed a valid argument against factory farms. All of those birds packed into terrible conditions in massive numbers basically guarantees a massive culling of livestock every time the risk of avian flu is high. More numerous, smaller facilities where the animals aren't stressed out and in incredibly close proximity would mean that a single housing facility becoming infected would lead to fewer animals culled if a facility is exposed. It would be a much, much smaller impact on the market. The price of eggs would be higher than our current supply during healthy years, but wouldn't spike by 100% during high risk years.

Something, something, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Or hens in a single, massive building.