Sunny side up, poached, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, deviled, Easter, soufflé, omelette, free range, organic, cage-free, pasture raised-whatever your choice and however you plan to prepare the ubiquitous protein – eggs are going to crack your grocery budget. Prices have more than doubled due to an egg shortage caused by the H5N1 Avian Flu.
The bird flu outbreak started in 2024 with detection of bird flu in dairy cows. As of this week it was detected in over 166,065,938 poultry in 51 jurisdictions. Over 145 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been killed to stop the spread. For a rough baseline, there are about 400 million egg laying chickens and 9 billion broiler chickens in the country.
There have been 67 confirmed cases in humans and one death. Experts still emphasize that the risk to humans is very low. They state there is no evidence that properly handled, stored and cooked eggs can lead to infection in humans.
