Grade A Large eggs are selling for an average $1.46 a dozen at grocery stores, little changed from the $1.49 a dozen a week ago but below the $1.54 seen a year ago, says the USDA’s weekly egg report. With the Memorial Day holiday past, “Shoppers searching for bargains are finding them very scarce as grocers are backing away from them this week.” While Grade A prices held steady, another gauge, the average price for Large white eggs Grade A or better was up 6 cents a dozen.
Iowa State University business analyst Marco Ibarburu told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that it could take a year or two to rebuild U.S. hen flocks after the avian influenza epidemic abates. “It will be a gradual process … it will take some time,” said Ibarburu. The Star-Tribune says bird flu “has claimed more than 36 million layer hens, almost all of them in the Upper Midwest. The loss equals about 12 percent of the nation’s egg-laying capacity. Iowa is the biggest U.S. egg-producing state, and the flu there alone has wiped out 24 million chickens, or 41 percent of its commercial hen population.”
The newspaper quoted a spokesman for a major Twin Cities grocery chain as saying the chain has seen “significant increase in our egg and turkey prices over this past week.” Egg prices at the chain are up 40 percent in two weeks.
The USDA’s running tally of confirmed outbreaks among poultry flocks listed 197 cases with losses of 44.6 million fowl, almost all chickens and turkeys.