The U.S. government is on a global egg hunt, seeking exports from countries in Europe and elsewhere to ease a severe shortage that has caused egg prices at grocery stores to hit record highs.
The U.S. government is on a global egg hunt, seeking exports from countries in Europe and elsewhere to ease a severe shortage that has caused egg prices at grocery stores to hit record highs.
Egg prices aren’t even being driven by a shortage. Every local market near me has thousands of eggs that are about to expire. Which means they have sat there long enough to expire, because nobody is buying them. People are seeing the increased egg prices, and simply eating fewer eggs.
Studies have found that the recent issues should only affect egg prices by ~10-15%. But instead, we have seen increases as high as 200-500%. The real issue is greedflation; Egg producers did the math on supply and demand, and realized selling less eggs could be more profitable. Imagine they can sell 5 egg cartons at $2 each, or 2 cartons at $6 each. The latter nets them more profit and they don’t have to produce+package+ship as many eggs, which lowers their overhead costs.
The only thing foreign eggs would solve is that it would introduce competition. But even then, why would other countries’ egg producers have any incentive to compete on price? They can simply match existing prices, blame the cost on higher international shipping, and make more profit too.
Your experience is interesting, because where I am it absolutely is a shortage. Most stores are putting a limit of 1 dozen eggs per customer because it was getting so bad. The only place where I can reliably find eggs is the farmer’s market and the organic store.