Egg prices recovering from staggering highs, trending downward: “The worst is over”

Shoppers may be in for a surprise when they look at the cost of eggs the next time they go to the store, a local economist says.

Egg prices have fallen drastically since the holiday season despite many news outlets reporting the contrary. The average cost of a carton of a dozen white eggs in New York last week dropped to $3.13 compared to the staggering $5.42 on Dec. 23, according to the latest weekly figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Jonathan Haughton, chairman of Suffolk University’s economics department, told the Herald on Tuesday he’s seeing a reduction here, too. He bought a carton of brown eggs for roughly $3.70 last weekend at a local Whole Foods, down from the more than $4 he spent earlier this month.

“Will it stay down? That’s a different question,” Haughton said. “It still is a bit of an issue, but my sense is the worst is over.”

The national average retail price of a dozen eggs hit $4.25 in December, up from $1.79 a year earlier, figures show.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) sent a letter last week asking for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether egg prices have been improperly manipulated by producers.

A farmer-led advocacy group called Farm Action made a similar request earlier this month arguing that there “appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits.”

The spike in egg prices has been attributed to the millions of chickens that were slaughtered to limit the spread of bird flu and farmers having to compensate for inflation driving up their costs.

Roughly 43 million egg-laying chickens have been slaughtered over the past year to help control bird flu. More than 49 million birds in 46 states had died either as a result of virus infection or due to exposure to infected birds, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in November.

The largest U.S. producer of eggs, Cal-Maine Foods, was singled out by both Reed and the Farm Action group because it reported last month that its quarterly sales had jumped 110% to $801.7 million on the record egg prices, helping it generate a $198.6 million profit. up from just $1.1 million a year earlier.

As the spread of bird flu has dissipated, Haughton said he believes egg prices will continue to drop, but some uncertainty remains. He cited grain as a big source in the production and pricing of eggs, adding that grain costs often fluctuate due to the war in Ukraine.

“The big unknown is whether the flu will come back,” Haughton said. “It tends to go in waves. It only has to hit a producer that has a million chickens and a big facility, and that’s another million of them destroyed and offline.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report