More Than 111 Million Birds Have Been Affected by Bird Flu — and It's Making Eggs Hard to Find

Eggs have been a big topic of conversation over 2024. Between skyrocketing egg prices being one of the major points of the presidential election to endless egg recalls, it seems they're always in the news. And now, we're back at it — because eggs are once again hard to find. And it's all because of avian influenza. 

According to several reports, stores around the U.S. are experiencing egg shortages, and states that require cage-free hens are particularly hard hit due to rising cases of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), also known as "bird flu." 

"After two months of no outbreaks, we had them recently in Utah, Oregon, California, and Washington, and three of those states are exclusively cage-free," Emily Metz, the chief executive and president of the American Egg Board, shared with CBS MoneyWatch. "Where we are hearing reports of shortages it's at stores like a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's."

As CBS noted, more than 40% of America's egg-laying hens are raised in cage-free environments, with 60% of bird flu cases involving cage-free farms. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's monthly report, table egg production was down 2.6% year over year in September and 1.6% month over month. And things only got worse in October. As the report noted, "During October, confirmations of (HPAI) resulted in the loss of 2.8 million egg layers in Utah, Washington, and Oregon. Based on these losses, the fourth-quarter table egg production projection was adjusted down by 5 million dozen to 1,980 million dozen. In total, 2024 table egg production is projected at 7,783 million dozen, a decrease of 1% year over year." It also adjusted egg production to be down for the first half of 2025.  

Because production has decreased, prices are expected to go up. "The daily New York wholesale price for large eggs averaged 313.3 cents per dozen in October. This is up about 20 cents from September and up 184 cents from last October," the report added. And though prices stabilized at the beginning of October, they began to "climb steeply" on October 9. "After climbing by 20 cents or more per day for more than a week, the increases began to ease and eventually leveled at 446 cents per dozen at the end of October." 

Based on this data, the USDA projected fourth-quarter average wholesale whole-egg prices at "340 cents per dozen." For 2025, it adjusted its projected average prices up by "25 cents in each of the first two quarters to 250 cents and 200 cents per dozen, respectively." 

As of December 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 111,412,626 birds had been affected by bird flu across 49 states, which experts say is making eggs more expensive — not inflation.  

"Bird flu is by far the biggest factor affecting egg prices right now," Bernt Nelson, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, previously shared with NBC News. "In the last couple months alone, we've seen about 10 million birds affected by the virus."

However, birds aren't the only animals affected by the virus. As Food & Wine previously reported, the bird flu was also detected in a batch of raw milk sold in California, triggering a recall. It's also been detected in a child in California, marking the first positive case of the illness in a child in U.S. history.