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The price of eggs [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-08
Egg prices have risen fromMXN97 to MXN105, which is $5.18 for 30, or $2.07 per dozen. Last week at $1.97
What stops at the border?
Bird flu doesn’t.
Predatory pricing?
Unsanitary farming practices?
Monopolistic supply?
www.commondreams.org/… has published a strong piece today on this. A new Food & Water Watch report details how "corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
KEY POINTS:
• Average retail prices for eggs in the U.S. jumped 2.5-fold from January 2022 to January2023, reaching $4.82 per dozen.
• Egg price spikes hit regions that were bird flu-free until recently. The U.S. Southeastremained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025, and actually increasedegg production in 2022 and 2023 over 2021 levels. Nevertheless, retail egg prices in theSoutheast rose alongside January 2023’s national price spikes.
• Egg prices never returned to pre-outbreak levels, even after retail inventories recovered.From April to December 2023, national retail inventories of eggs exceeded the five-yearaverage by as much as 12.8 percent. Nevertheless, average egg prices exceeded the fiveyear average in each month as well.• Cal-Maine did not experience any bird flu outbreaks in its flocks in its fiscal year (FY) 2023,and actually sold more eggs than in the previous two years. Yet it still sold eggs at inflatedprices (2.8 times as much for conventional eggs compared to FY 2021), pocketing nearly$1 more per dozen sold after covering its expenses. This amounted to over $1 billion in“windfall profits.”• Cal-Maine’s gross profits ballooned more than seven-fold in FY 2023 compared to FY2021. It awarded its shareholders lavish dividends totaling $250 million — 40 times more than in FY 2022.
But not to worry. It’s called “capitalism”.
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