Families might be dyeing fewer eggs this Easter as a cost saving measure. Egg prices right now are nearly four times as high as this time last year.
The avian flu outbreak last year was the largest since 2015. According to MSU Extension educator Paul Gross, more than 50 million birds were culled nationwide to stem the spread.
On top of that, he said production costs increased with inflation. Consumers can expect high prices to continue for at least another six months, he said but it’s hard to say if it will ever go back to a dollar a carton.
“It just depends on the severity, if we continue to get infected flocks, get the disease under control, get those flocks rebuilt to laying ahead of time," he said. "It’s a supply-demand issue. As supply increases, we’ll see some softening of the prices.”
2022 was an unusual year for avian flu, Gross said. Migrating flocks carried a more transmissible strain of the disease.
"If you look where the infections are—if you look on the MDA maps and stuff—you look at where those migratory flyways are, and that’s where you see a lot of the infections," he said.
The popularity of free-range flocks puts them more at risk of catching the disease, Gross said.