"and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety"

Which oddly did not increase in price much. I was in a discussion once on a forum and brought up that eggs around me (PNW) were still in the $6 for 18 when everyone else was complaining about $10 for a dozen. Next time I bought eggs, the ones I buy were the same price as always but the normal white eggs were in fact $10 a dozen...

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dhruvmittal 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I had the same experience on the east coast-- farmers market eggs continued to be $5-$8/doz (depending on size) even as the normal white eggs raced to $10. I think the "conventional wisdom" was that these small farmers weren't hit by the flu in the way that the big industrial farmers were, and that their living conditions made them hardier or less susceptible. I guess I now assume that these small farms relying on direct sales were simply oblivious to the bidding shenanigans.

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helterskelter2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm also in the PNW. The egg thing seemed weird to me when the local organic eggs didn't budge at all. We had bird deaths in the wild from the flu as well, so I know it was out here.

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Freedom2 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My friends in the midwest always tell me egg prices have actually never been lower. They've been tracking them for a while now, and they were low during 2014-2020, then had a massive, unexpected jump, then another massive decrease starting 2025. Curious to know what the reasons are here.

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bee_rider 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which wouldn’t be that odd if the conspiracy theory was true (since your local farms presumably wouldn’t be invited to the price-fixing meetings).

	▲	elevation 15 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It doesn't take secret meetings; the industrial players are subject to regulatory costs that a small local farmer isn't. When "big egg" had to slaughter millions of layers because of a birdflu outbreak, then sell a limited amount of eggs while they waited for new chicks to mature, your local farmer's birds kept laying without an interruption in production or a sudden repeat of the startup costs.
	▲	dpark 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Local farms are rarely selling directly to grocery stores. They sell to a number of organic/free range/whatever companies like Vital Farms that aggregate from the smaller farmers and sell to grocery stores (or grocery store suppliers). At least that is my understanding of the way the scale is managed.
	▲	BashiBazouk 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I was mainly reacting to that line which seemed to me a throw away that was never returned too implying: and if normal egg prices are high just think about those more expensive brown eggs. Which is too bad, noticing the higher end eggs not moving much in price might help the general argument of the article...

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FuriouslyAdrift 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eggs at my Aldi never went much above $3 a dozen. The cage-free, etc hovered around $6 at the worst (normal is around $3-something)