By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

Fewer and more expensive eggs in 2024 put estimated $1.41 billion burden on consumers in 2024, according to study by a trio of researchers examining the impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza — HPAI — on the economy.

Expectations are for the price burden to continue through 2025 as producers work to repopulate laying hens lost to HPAI.

The study, “The Economic Impact of HPAI on U.S. Egg Consumers: Estimating a $1.41 Billion Loss in Consumer Surplus” was published last month by the Fryar Price Risk Management Center. It was conducted as an extension to an earlier paper, “Biological lags and market dynamics in vertically coordinated food supply chains: HPAI impacts on U.S. egg prices,” published in the journal Food Policy in 2024.

The Fryar Center is part of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.

James Mitchell, assistant professor and extension economist for the Division of Agriculture, was the lead author on both papers, which were written with Jada Thompson, associate professor and Division of Agriculture economist and Trey Malone, an economist formerly at the University of Arkansas, but now at Purdue University.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, HPAI affected 38.4 million commercial egg laying birds and 29 flocks in 2024.

“As a result, we estimate an average week-to-week increase of 9 percent in retail egg prices, independent of other sources of egg price inflation,” the authors said. Using own-price elasticities — a measure of demand responsiveness to price changes — they estimated that price increases lowered demand for eggs by 2 percent on average.

“This reduction in consumption, coupled with higher prices, led to an estimated consumer surplus loss of $1.41 billion,” the researchers said. “This estimate reflects the economic burden on consumers due to reduced availability and affordability of eggs following HPAI outbreaks.

“The magnitude of these losses underscores the importance of understanding how disease outbreaks in the egg supply chain influence consumer welfare and market dynamics,” the three authors said.

The cost of eggs

While the cost of eggs may seem to be a simple supply vs. demand equation, determining the size of the economic loss is quite a bit more complex, say the economists.

“Someone not familiar with broiler or turkey or egg production might say, ‘oh, a bird died today because of bird flu and egg prices today are impacted by that’,” Mitchell said.

HPAI has been hitting broilers, egg layers and turkey production in the U.S. and globally hard since 2022, resulting in the loss of billions of commercial birds, not to mention birds and other animals in the wild.

“Our main thesis is that you have to consider a longer timeframe,” Mitchell said. “What’s happening today is a function of what happened six months ago.”

Because of the fierceness of the current strain of HPAI, which has a mortality rate of higher than 75 percent, whole flocks are destroyed once the disease is detected. Mitchell said if a flock has to be depopulated because of avian influenza or another cause, “you’re losing egg production from that flock.

“But you don’t just replace that flock tomorrow. It takes about six months for the new birds to reach maturity and start laying eggs,” he said.

Mitchell said that when they started their initial analysis looking at 2022 data, the challenge was “how much consideration had to be given to disentangling the impacts of bird flu from other things that were happening in 2022.”

Economic aftershocks from the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine war and resulting higher grain prices “were something we had to be careful about,” he said.

Price rollercoaster

When egg prices rise, so do the number of media interview requests for Thompson.

“The questions that are asked right now are, ‘Why are prices are high?’ And ‘when are they coming back down?’” Thompson said. She noted that in 2022, HPAI led to some 43 million laying hens being taken out of egg production” in the U.S.

That was possibly the largest loss of layers in one quarter, at least until 2024-25.

“In the fourth quarter of 2024, there was a loss of 20 million birds,” Thompson said. “And in the first two months of this year, some 30 million birds. That’s an astronomical number of birds being affected by HPAI.”

Much of the nation’s commercial egg production is concentrated in a fairly small area, including Minnesota and Iowa, Mitchell said.

There have been proposals within the industry to bring broiler eggs to the market, but both Thompson and Mitchell say that’s not an easy fix because the broiler and egg production systems don’t interact.

“It’s not the first time we’ve had this conversation,” Thompson said. “There are limitations on what can be done when dealing with a different system. How do we collect these eggs? How are we going to store and clean them? This will mean additional transportation costs.

“And egg prices are really high already,” she said. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics retail egg prices reached $4.95 per dozen in January 2025, an increase of 96 percent compared to January 2024.

The research comes with a few important caveats. First, the estimate assumes that consumer preferences and purchasing behavior remained stable, meaning that consumers responded to price increases in the same way as they have in the past.

Second, the analysis focuses on the direct impact of HPAI on egg prices and consumer surplus, meaning it does not account for any indirect effects, such as potential changes in producer behavior or government policy responses.

“Despite these considerations, this estimate provides a clear and useful benchmark for understanding how HPAI affected egg prices and consumer spending in 2024,” the authors said.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. 

About the Division of Agriculture

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system. 

The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three campuses.  

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.