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At the Trader Joe’s grocery store in west Manhattan, freezing temperatures have failed to stop hordes of people waiting outside for the store to open at 8am. Most are here to snag an increasingly rare and highly in-demand item — a dozen eggs.
When the doors open, the rush leaves Daniel, a Trader Joe’s employee, scrambling to prevent people pushing one another or snatching up more than the store’s limit of a single egg carton per customer. At noon, when a midday egg delivery allows Trader Joe’s to restock, the entire scene plays out again.
The worst outbreak of avian flu in US history has forced farmers across the country to cull millions of egg-laying chickens, according to the US agriculture department, resulting in a widespread egg shortage. The wholesale price of a dozen Midwest large eggs has jumped from less than $3 a year ago to almost $9, according to commodity price information service Expana.
In his address to Congress this week, Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden for letting egg prices get “out of control”. His plan to lower prices includes investment in research on avian flu and importing tens of millions of eggs from overseas. Still, experts say it could take months for the price and supply of eggs to return to normal.
In the meantime, the shortage has resulted in frenzied demand, bizarre behaviour and high levels of stress for workers in retail and hospitality. “My job is basically just eggs now,” says Daniel, who compares the drama to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when supply-chain disruptions left stores with bare shelves.
“It’s not just me either, eggs are the number one thing everyone here gets asked about all day,” he adds.
Restaurants, including nationwide chains Waffle House and Denny’s, have opted to impose a surcharge on egg dishes to account for the higher prices. Servers say angry customers are taking out their frustration by reducing tips.
Some shoppers are recouping their money in unorthodox ways. “Two large organic free range eggs, fresh and in original carton,” read one advert I spotted on Facebook Marketplace. The eggs, priced at $3, were left over from baking a birthday cake. The New Yorker who posted them obviously decided they were too valuable to leave sitting in the back of the fridge.
Elsewhere, egg thefts are up. At Luna Park Cafe in Seattle, owner Heong Soon Park arrived one day last month to find two men stealing more than 500 eggs from the restaurant’s outdoor walk-in refrigerator. They also took meat, fruit and liquid egg products worth nearly $800, according to Seattle police.
But few have felt the pain of the avian flu outbreak as much as the people who work at the country’s industrial farms.
“Antonia” works at a chicken processing plant in Arkansas. She asked that I withhold her real name because she is not authorised to speak publicly about her job. Antonia immigrated to the US from El Salvador in 2000 in search of a job to support her family and has spent the past 23 years working six eight-hour shifts each week. The production line is usually so frenetic that workers regularly get injured, she said.
In the past few weeks, however, her shifts have ended four hours early, if they happen at all, as the plant’s stock of poultry dries up. Supervisors told Antonia and her co-workers that the birds they would have received had to be killed but refused to say why. After speaking with workers at nearby plants, Antonia is certain that the reason is bird flu.
“I need more money in my cheque,” Antonia said. “You have to have at least 40 hours to make ends meet the way life is now, the way things are with inflation.”
The Trump administration plans to stabilise the national supply of eggs by focusing on relief for farmers. But Antonia and the worker advocacy group she is a part of, Venceremos, hopes for more substantial change.
If this shortage makes wealthier grocery shoppers and diners look at the overcrowded factories that contributed to avian flu’s spread, perhaps they will demand higher standards. The great American egg crisis could prove the breaking point for unsustainable food production.
taylor.rogers@ft.com
