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Eggs US – Price – Chart

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271–280 of 810 posts

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#271
post #267

Michigan here, this is has been made worse by a new law requiring all eggs to be 'cage-free'. I think I paid $9 for the cheap store-brand eggs (18) last week. And that is, if they even have any eggs at the store. I've been to Wal-mart and Kroger when the entire section is empty with a sign saying there are egg supply issues. It's also winter so my 'chicken farmer friends' are low on eggs, when it's cold the chickens…

If it were actually impossible to have affordable eggs without confining chickens to tiny cages for their entire lives, that would be a damning indictment of our entire food system. But luckily that isn't actually the case. The price difference between cage-free and "caged" eggs is negligible. I'm in New York City, not known for its local egg production, and I can still get cage-free eggs for $4/dozen. Kroker/Walmart…

I think the most brutal thing is when the male chicks are immediately sent into a shredder damn. Out of sight out of mind

That's where I can be a proponent of lab-grown meat without consciousness

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#272
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.

Actually the inconvenient truth is that it's not. Free range birds are able to interact and spread the disease more easily than the caged birds which can be quarantined. At least in my location all the cage free inventory is totally wiped out.

Free range birds cannot be quarantined?

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really raises the question - should vital infrastructure, like food production, be built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency? Have things swung too far in one direction?

> built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency I think framing it as an either/or is a bit of a mental trap. They are sometimes in opposition, sometimes not. For example, those farms which were not resilient are not maximizing their profits, since they've had more than a year of warning of avian flu. They were operating to minimize work and costs, not maximize profit, and they are losing out on a ton of it ri…

I don’t think of it this way. I think the conventional producers were acting to maximize expected profits at the cost of increased volatility in outcomes. Most years these practices have been more profitable.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#274
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.

Actually the inconvenient truth is that it's not. Free range birds are able to interact and spread the disease more easily than the caged birds which can be quarantined. At least in my location all the cage free inventory is totally wiped out.

The only thing caged birds do is interact with other birds. There’s a reason antibiotics are so widely used. It’s like a massive Petri dish.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local sellers are $4/doz for the good ones, $5/18 from another seller whose eggs taste 'off' so I quit buying them. I think $4/doz for quality eggs is worth it. This is also hopefully a catalyst to get people to petition their city for backyard chicken rights. Raising chickens is relatively easy and can be rewarding. Even if you don't want to personally, support the right of those around you to, please.

Generally, mixing livestock and people in the confined conditions of a city is a very bad idea (if you're talking about suburbs, then that's a completely different thing, and I would agree with you about supporting it).

Ah yes, typically suburbs. Cities that adopt it generally have regulations around it, such as needing an inspection and nominally priced permit. The inspection just makes sure it's sanitary and follows certain rules about distance from house and whatnot.

I definitely don't advise raising chickens in an apartment or some such.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internal incoherence is a feature of a cult, not a bug! The more deliberately twisted shit they can make you believe, the more dependent your entire cognitive architecture is on them.

It's a mirror of the thoughtless language engineering of their opponents, it's like calling people "latinX" without asking them first.

A minor difference being that one is a bunch of bluehairs Twitterati and social science professors using a goofy word and the other is a systematic purge of scientific literature and government data... Minor difference though!

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lost 2 flocks of chickens to a combination of raccoons, foxes, and skunks. Interestingly enough none of those could kill my turkeys - they are big enough to fight them off I guess. They don't lay as many eggs though. It is a lot of work, but after my last group was killed off 2 months I have not impressed by store eggs, so I'm planning on re-enforcing my coop so I can get another group of them soon.

> I have not impressed by store eggs Curious to know what differences do you discern between store and fresh eggs? Not doubting you, just curious to know.

Not the author but for me the taste is obvious. It’s like the difference between the cheapest eggs and the pasture raised you get at the store.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really raises the question - should vital infrastructure, like food production, be built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency? Have things swung too far in one direction?

To my mind there's no question that it's swung too far. But it's very easy for me to live in the country and say "oh I get all my fresh produce from the local farm!" when there are cities of millions of people that need feeding too. Scaling while retaining resiliency is not easy.

I live in a city and buy most of my fresh produce, meat, and dairy from local farms.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency I think framing it as an either/or is a bit of a mental trap. They are sometimes in opposition, sometimes not. For example, those farms which were not resilient are not maximizing their profits, since they've had more than a year of warning of avian flu. They were operating to minimize work and costs, not maximize profit, and they are losing out on a ton of it ri…

The issue with that reasoning is that it fails to take into account that risk is a commodity now. It's often more profitable to go for short term profit and offload your risk to an insurer who amortizes that monetary risk in a pool containing a bunch of other industries. For critical services like food production , that's a problem. "Well, we don't have food, but it's okay because screw production went well" doesn't…

I'm not sure in what sense you mean risk is a commodity, and why it's a problem. I'm also unsure what changed to make it so now, as opposed to having ever been so.

Those who actually took risk into account and planned accordingly have profited wonderfully. Those who did not take risks into account lost their bet. Eggs are priced higher for some, but are pretty much available everywhere still, and have not dipped below some sort of minimal level of availability. In California, past shortages were far far worse than this one, and even then the egg shortages were in no way catastrophic to the economy or health of humans.

Of all the times in history, ever, we are at the lowest possible risk of famine. Instead, our abundance of high calorie food is the biggest risk to the health of Americans.

So I would like to understand your point a bit more if you have the time to elaborate.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#280
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bird flu, made worse by concentrated farming of chickens. Those operations are basically disease factories and some bird flus come from them.

That's actually not true. Bird flu comes from wild birds, not factory farming. Chickens get it when wild birds land near them due to free range laws. The solution (possibly temporary) is to confine the chickens in sealed buildings so they can't contact the wild birds.

And the reason why it spreads so well is still concentrated industrial farming.
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