According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California has some of the highest prices in the nation for a carton of one dozen eggs, reports NBC 7’s Dana Williams.
Empty shelves and high price tags: These are two characteristics of many egg sections in grocery stores throughout San Diego right now.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California has some of the highest prices in the nation for a carton of a dozen eggs. As of Tuesday, the benchmark price for USDA Grade AA medium eggs was $4.76, while large eggs were going for $6.72 and extra large to jumbo eggs cost $6.74. The USDA also said in their “Daily California Eggs” update that “the southwest shell egg inventory decreased 20.8% compared to a week ago.”
NBC 7 went to five grocery stores in the Mission Valley area on Tuesday to see if shoppers were seeing the impact. At the Vons, Trader Joe’s and Walmart locations, multiple options were sold out, leaving some shelves bare, but the Food 4 Less and Ralphs had more inventory.
At Ralphs, two signs were put out for customers. The first one read: “Due to the avian bird flu and to support all customers, we are limiting egg cartons to two each per customer. Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for the inconvenience.”
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The second one read: “At this time, there’s a nationwide shortage of eggs. With high seasonal demand, you may notice fewer supplies or higher prices. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
And, they’re spot on.
Millions of hens have recently died in the U.S. because of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), also known as bird flu. A memo from the USDA in May said the first case was detected on Feb. 8, 2022, and it had since grown to impact 164 commercial poultry operations, including 18 egg facilities. They added that “as of May 2, more than 29 million layers had been lost to HPAI.”
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For small farm owners like Chloe Nevare, who is co-owner of Happy Hens in Ramona, she said it's caused a ripple effect throughout the industry.
“There’s just a huge deficit," Nevarez. "There’s no way that I could possibly fill the need for millions of birds not producing egg,s and now there’s people who are like, ‘OK, well, there’s no eggs.' "
Thankfully, Nevarez's 15,000 hens have been able to escape the virus, so there has not been much of an impact in that way, but she has noticed more locals coming to her farm store for eggs.
“We’ve got people coming constantly, and even in the last, probably the last four weeks, we’ve noticed it a ton," Nevarez said. "Everybody is like, ‘Oh, my goodness, Costco is out of eggs! So we found the closest egg ranch to us and we came to you.' "
Nevarez explained that they have not needed to increase their prices because of this latest issue, but they have had to raise prices because of all of the other things — like inflation and higher operating costs.
“We’ve gotten a lot of questions: ‘Why are prices going up?’ this, this and that," Nevarez said. "So, I feel like it’s not a matter of people trying to price-gouge you or trying to be shady in any way. I mean, as a farmer, I can tell you we are experiencing huge increases in all of our costs, and I think as a consumer, you’re not really considering the whole picture of what brought these eggs to you in the grocery store. So, I would just say to be gracious to people."
