By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
That omelet is costing more again thanks to highly pathogenic avian influenza, but Jada Thompson says the egg price rollercoaster has a downhill side too.
According to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, since February 2022, HPAI has been detected in more than 1,400 flocks affecting 149.96 million birds. From Jan. 1-30 of this year, more than 19.63 million birds have been affected including 71 commercial flocks and 43 backyard flocks. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The same similar thing happened at the end of 2022 and into 2023,” said Thompson, associate professor and poultry economist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
“What you have is very tight supply,” she said. “We were down about 3 percent in egg layer supply at the time and we’re down about 3 percent in supply right now.”
The number of egg crates in the grocery stores is also affected by a tiny bit of “just-in-case” buying by consumers.
“We see the egg prices, and then consumers are responding,” Thompson said. “There’s a bit of people buying all the eggs because they’re concerned about the availability”
Flu cycles
While the season for bird flu cycles with spring and fall wildfowl migrations, the rhythm of the egg cycle has its own complexities. Thompson said the retail cycle moves with the holidays when consumers tend to buy more eggs. And then there’s the biology.
“The high demand tends to coincide with periods of the year where egg laying kind of drops off a little, due to it being colder and the amount of light changes. There are hormonal effects to egg laying,” she said. “Then in summer, the bird flu starts ebbing and then it picks up in the fall.”
When bird flu is detected, the flocks need to be depopulated because the current strain of the disease has such a high mortality rate. Whether it’s turkeys, broilers or egg layers, it takes time to replace the birds — “there’s also kind of a bit of a biological lag in that price recovery system and for the supply chain.”
Looking back at 2023, as spring moved on, “we didn’t have as many cases of bird flu. We didn’t have as many birds out of the system, and so prices kind of recovered, and those stories fall away, and we don’t think about it,” Thompson said.
However, 2024 is reminding consumers of what was forgotten in the summer of 2023.
“We started seeing a bit more of an uptick. We saw a little bit more shocks to the market,” she said.
For comparison:
- In 2022, 43 million table egg layers were affected by HPAI
- In 2023 12 million layers were affected
- In 2024, 38 million layers were affected.
“Right now? We’re already at 13 million in 2025,” Thompson said.
However, Thompson expects the supply will recover.
“Our food supply is healthy, our egg supply is healthy,” Thompson said. “I can tell you that the eggs are coming back on the market.”
Dairy and poultry
Another part of the avian influenza story is the dairy industry.
“There’s a linkage between the dairy industry and the poultry industry, and it’s probably the closest linkage we’re ever going to see right now,” Thompson said. “And it’s that dairy cows are susceptible to bird flu, and it reduces production.
“You can see milk prices starting to go up a little bit,” she said. “When the cows are sick, they producers have to dump the milk and that’s reducing some production levels.”
Affected dairy cows are isolated or segregated from the herd and owners are advised to contact their herd veterinarian for additional procedures, sampling, and confirmatory testing. It has been reported that on average, animals have been reported to recover within 30-45 days.
According to APHIS, 16 states reported dairy cow infections in January. The Food and Drug Administration says on its site that “pasteurization and diversion or destruction of abnormal milk are two important measures that are part of the federal-state milk safety system.
“Even if the virus is detected in raw milk, the current pasteurization process, HTST or high temperature, short time, will inactivate the virus,” according to the FDA’s site.
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.
