Even though big food companies like Walmart, General Mills and McDonald’s pledged to sell only cage-free eggs, producers are growing wary of investing in cage-free housing because “those premium eggs simply are not selling well,” reports American Public Media’s Marketplace.
“If [stores] are not taking the cage-free eggs, [hatcheries] simply have to back away from that,” Terry Pollard, a senior vice president at Big Dutchman, a cage-free housing producer, told Marketplace. “Just running a good business is going to tell you to not produce those types of eggs in large numbers, because you’re going to lose money.”
Prior to the worst-ever U.S. outbreak of bird flu in the spring of 2015, the price gap between large generic eggs and cage-free eggs was as much as two dollars. But that gap largely vanished in the wake of the outbreak, which killed 50 million turkeys and egg-laying chickens, as prices plummeted across the board as supply shrunk.
“There were…times during last year, during the peak price points, that cage-free eggs were actually cheaper at retail than the generic egg was,” said Brian Moscogiuri, an egg market analyst at Urner Barry. Now, with flocks fully rebounded—the USDA estimated in April that there would be an additional dozen eggs per person produced this year—and cage-free cartons at more than $3.15, “consumers have taken note,” says Marketplace.
In recent years, a flood of companies—some three-dozen and counting—have pledged to shift to all cage-free eggs. Sysco, the world’s largest food distributor, joined the cage-free rush in June. Many of the pledges allow the companies years—a decade even—to complete the shift. Sysco, for instance, says it will be all cage-free by 2026. Most egg-laying chickens are raised in battery cages, which affords virtually no room for the bird to spread its wings or move much at all. Cage-free simply gives the birds more room to move about.