Why egg prices are rising, or: how humans respond to scarcity
25 years of pandemic coverage + Straw Wars (Issue #286)
This morning, before I opened up Medium to write this, I ate two (scrambled) eggs. Each one cost $1. A dozen cost $12 at the bodega down the street. (This is more than the average cost of $4.95, probably because I got the bougie cage-free eggs, and because the bodega needs to pay its rent.)
Two years ago, eggs were, on average, half expensive as they are today.
On the surface, the cause seems simple: an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu. To stop the spread (and prevent a possible second pandemic), egg farmers are diligently culling their flocks whenever there’s an outbreak. Just one infection means an entire flock of hens must be killed. 148 million hens have been slaughtered since the outbreak began in 2022.
In parallel, the U.S. justice department is investigating whether egg production companies are using avian flu as an excuse to inflate prices beyond what’s reasonable. In 2023, the largest egg producer in the U.S., Cal-Maine Foods, was found guilty of price-fixing in a jury trial, raising suspicions that they’re now up to something similar. In a three-part series investigating that theory, antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash notes that in 2015, an outbreak of avian flu caused much smaller price increases (~40% as opposed to today’s ~200% spikes). I’m honestly curious what you make of this. My theory is that the reality is probably more complex than we think. High prices are probably the result of avian flu and a growing monopoly on eggs. But I don’t know for sure.
On Medium, behavioral scientist Dr Paul Harrison (PhD) goes one level deeper to investigate how the egg discourse (and the fact that they’re so dang expensive) is making us feel. He believes our reaction to the shortage tells us something important about human psychology. “Most of consumer behavior is dictated by perception rather than reality,” he explains, and scarcity changes our perception of value. If you find yourself subconsciously stockpiling eggs right now, or savoring them a bit more, you’re not alone.
The egg situation also contains a lesson about consumerism. It’s a reminder that everything is finite. As Harrison concludes:
“A chicken can only lay a finite number of eggs; an avocado tree can only produce so much fruit. Our economic models are built on the assumption of endless growth. There is something fundamentally flawed about this equation.”
🥤 What else we’re reading…
- Former New York Times Covid reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. (featured in issue #257) published a book last year: The Wisdom of Plagues, Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics. It’s now out in paperback and features a new chapter on H5N1 bird flu. One human has died of it, so the risk of it turning into another Covid pandemic is very low, but as McNeil writes, “When a virus is under a long but weak counterattack from a human immune system, it mutates to evade that attack. That doesn’t necessarily mean that strain will arise in nature. We still can’t say whether this virus will go pandemic or just pick humans off one by one as it has since 1997.”
- Content designer and UX writer Rita Kind-Envy journeys through time to track the evolution of our most controversial utensil (?): the straw. Before the Straw Wars began — ongoing discourse over the fact that 500 million plastic straws are discarded daily, many of which end up in oceans — ancient Mesopotamians sipped thick beer from bent gold and silver tubes. The first straws were meant for only royalty.
✨ One of the top highlights on Medium last week
“You don’t need talent. You don’t need experience. All you need is time, consistency, and patience.” — Roy Phang, “How 60 Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life”
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