The Journal. - An Eggspensive Dilemma

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

As the U.S. fights a persistent bird flu outbreak, the cost of eggs has skyrocketed. The owner of a brunch cafe tells us about the impact of high-priced eggs on his business and WSJ’s Patrick Thomas unpacks one possible fix that the egg industry wouldn't consider – until now. Further Reading: - Soaring Egg Prices Reignite Debate Over Bird Flu Vaccinations  - At the ‘Wall Street of Eggs,’ Demand Is Surging  - First Cows, Now Cats. Is Bird Flu Coming for Humans Next? Further Listening: - Bird Flu and the High Price of Eggs  - Farm-to-Table Pioneer on Why We Still Need Better Food  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the RVA Cafe in Richmond, Virginia, omelet pans are popping. In the kitchen, Daquan Woodbury is cracking, frying, and whisking eggs. Lots and lots of eggs. I mean, it's the basis of American breakfast, right? So I mean, everything comes with eggs and even things that you don't basis of American breakfast, right? So, I mean, everything comes with eggs, and even things that you don't realize comes with eggs, right? Because you'll say chicken and waffles, and everybody's like, oh, okay, well,

you don't really think about eggs in that. Eggs are also in Daquan's pancake batter, his banana nut muffins. They're in the egg wash, the breakfast sandwiches, the signature scramble. Can you actually list off the things that might contain eggs on your menu? Our Good Morning, which is our simple eggs and meat toast.

You have the hangry breakfast. That's a big breakfast that comes with eggs. And then somebody else ordered an omelet. So right there, that's eight eggs on one ticket, right? So it's everything. It doesn't stop. Ha ha ha. Put another way, Dayquan's brunch cafe runs on eggs.

Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs and more eggs. Yeah, just on a good, good week, we're cracking at least 3000 eggs. And maybe up from there. But in the last few months, Daquan's reliance on eggs has become a grade A problem for his business. The average cost of a dozen eggs has jumped to historic levels. Even taking it back to like the beginning of last year, so just a quick 12 months ago, right?

You know, I would say our normal case of 15 dozen eggs was generally somewhere around $40-ish dollars. Right now, at the wholesale suppliers where Daquan usually gets his eggs, he's been quoted prices for the same case that range from $120 to $189. And you're looking at it, you're like, so what do you do? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, February 25th.

Coming up on the show, cracking the conundrum of egg prices. To quote an iconic ad from the American Egg Board, I love eggs. I will take them scrambled, sunny-side up, poached. I just love them. Just like so many Americans do. Here's the Journal's resident egg-spurt, Patrick Thomas. How much do Americans love eggs, Patrick? Eggs are just so ubiquitous. That's what's for breakfast, right? Americans generally have about 279 eggs a year, so about six a week.

The humble egg occupies a dependable rung on what Patrick calls the protein ladder. Steak is always the most expensive, followed by pork, which has always kind of had its weird middle ground between chicken and beef. Chicken is always the cheaper of those meats. And then you have eggs, which loves to fancy itself as the cheapest protein. When we're in a depression, a recession, people tend to go buy eggs because it was even cheaper than chicken when times were really hard. SONIA DARA But right now, egg prices at stores across the country are sky high. According to US government data,

a dozen eggs cost an average of $5 these days, and in some places it's even higher. Last year, eggs averaged at about $3 a dozen. So what's the one big reason that eggs have gotten so expensive? The number one reason is the bird flu outbreak. Bird flu cases soaring once again in the U.S. To make matters worse, a new strain of the virus has been detected in California.

According to the USDA, avian flu has been confirmed in 146 flocks in the past month, affecting more than 20 million birds. The virus mostly spreads through contact with infected wild birds and their droppings. Farmers have installed things like lasers and sound cannons to keep the wild birds away from their chickens, and the government has provided more than a billion dollars in support. But once the virus does infect a chicken farm, there's been one main strategy for controlling the outbreak. Once it is confirmed in a flock, you just kill the whole flock.

So when one barn gets infected, you might be putting down four million hens at a time. That's so many. Yeah, it's a lot. It has just been absolutely devastating for egg farmers, producers, the whole supply chain over, really since the start of 2022 is when we first started hearing about it pop up again. But it just it has not gone away.

There's little signs that it is going to go anywhere. Now there's a growing sense that in the US, the outbreak has gotten out of control. The virus has started jumping to other species. Five more possible cases of the bird flu in cats. — The contagious virus has infected hundreds of dairy herds this year. — Right now, it is not spreading human to human, thank goodness. Right now, it's not killing a lot of people, thank goodness. But those are two things that can change on a dime.

— As of January, there have been nearly 70 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the United States, and a patient admitted to a hospital in Louisiana became the first U.S. death from the virus. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the current public health risk is low. The patient who died was elderly and had underlying medical conditions, and most of those who were infected worked on poultry or dairy farms. The CDC says it's watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposure.

The persistence of this outbreak has meant that farmers have had to wipe out flock after flock of birds. Do we know how many chickens have been culled or put down in this particular outbreak? It's about 160 million commercial chickens and turkeys Just chickens. It's over 120 million egg-laying hens and Wiping out millions of egg-laying hens means a lot fewer eggs, which is how we get those higher prices Has that high price affected demand? The funny thing is, not really.

Consumers have always just kept buying eggs. It's just, think about it. There's not that many things you can just substitute for. There's not another ingredient that comes to mind. There's some other products or fake egg products, but they tend to be a little bit pricier. There's just no good substitute for eggs. I asked Daquan, the cafe owner in Richmond, about the possibility of eggless brunch.

Have you thought about, I don't know, making food without eggs or finding some kind of substitute for it? Yeah, it's like you say that, but then what? Right, what do of substitute for it? Yeah, it's like, you say that, but then what? Right, what do you substitute for eggs? And Daquan's customers still want their omelets and French toast. That's why he's had to make a tough decision, something breakfast chains like Waffle House and Denny's have also done. Tack on an egg surcharge.

Yeah, so recently we've gone up about a dollar on each of our menu items that includes eggs. And the demand is always gonna be there, so we've increased our prices, but that doesn't stop people from buying it necessarily, right, so they still want it. People still want eggs for their breakfast. Yes, it is what it is.

What are you hoping for in this situation? Just general relief, a plan. I feel like in a general sense, we're getting educated on why the egg prices are what they are, but okay, how are we going to solve it? What's the fix? One fix, Patrick says, could be something that the poultry industry has refused to consider for a long time. And there is something out there that they haven't tried.

What's that? They have not tried to vaccinate the birds for bird flu. Why not? That's after the break. One possible solution to the rapidly spreading bird flu is a vaccine for poultry. But that idea has faced a lot of opposition for years, and there's two main reasons why. First, it's a logistical nightmare, considering there are 300 million egg-laying hens in the

U.S. What does a mass vaccination of chickens even look like for 300 million chickens? Well, especially if you're a cage-free operation or a pasture-raised egg operation, you're going to literally have to chase the chicken in some of those barns. So it's more complicated than I think some people think we can flip a switch and just vaccinate. The bigger concern, though, is that a chicken vaccination program could jeopardize America's $5 billion market for broiler chickens or chicken meat?

The reasoning is a bit complex, but it boils down to this, and that's that all of the other countries that import poultry products from the U.S. would have to sign off on our vaccination strategy. So they would have to approve the vaccine we're using, how we are surveilling the birds after it is administered, all of those different types of nuances of vaccinating an animal. And essentially, we individually have to go to the more than 150 trading partners of the United States to do such a thing. Why wouldn't other countries just embrace the idea of US vaccinated chickens or chicken products?

Like, what's the issue there? The general fear is that vaccines do not completely prevent infection and could mask the disease's presence. So it's always a safety concern of whether we're bringing the virus into their country. But these concerns affect one part of the poultry industry more than the other, because there are two camps in the chicken business, the egg people and the broiler chicken people.

For a long time, these two camps were on the same page. In 2022, they were telling Patrick that any plan to vaccinate chickens would never fly. But today, egg producers are getting desperate. Many want to vaccinate the flocks, and it's put them at odds with the broiler industry. The egg industry has really changed their tune. Just it has been a breaking point for them. They say it would basically be more worth it to vaccinate the flocks and not have to worry about infection than lose out on their exports. So the egg industry is

willing to bite the bullet on that. But the broiler chicken industry, the Tyson Foods, Purdue Farms, Pilgrim's Pride, those guys are not willing to lose out on exports because that is a huge deal to their bottom line to have that market. So there's like a split in the poultry industry over vaccinations.

There is a split in the poultry industry, yes, over vaccinations. And this is giving rise to a new debate. vaccinations. There's a split in the poultry industry, yes, over vaccinations. And this is giving rise to a new debate. When it comes to vaccines, which industry should come first? The chickens or the eggs? And then, earlier this month, the Trump administration signaled it might move away from culling and towards vaccines.

And tonight there's a new approach to fight the bird flu and it's being considered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Agriculture Department has issued a conditional license to a company to produce a vaccine for chickens. Shortly after, the head of President Trump's Economic Council talked about solving the egg shortage. Here's Kevin Hassett on CBS's Face the Nation. And so you go, I just went to the grocery store I shop for our family in parks. I love

to look at prices. And there were no eggs at the store yesterday, just a few. So Kevin Hassett said that essentially that the administration wanted to find new ways to address the bird flu outbreak. And so what we need to do is have better ways with biosecurity and medication and so on. So by Medicaid, I think everybody assumed he meant vaccination. There's no Tamiflu for birds here in this situation. But we don't really know what they're talking about yet. And to be clear, even the USDA's conditional approval for a vaccine doesn't mean there

are plans to administer doses yet. The vaccine hasn't been authorized for use on farms, and poultry producers can't buy it. The Trump administration says it's committed to safeguarding poultry farms and keeping egg prices affordable. And the USDA plans to roll out a strategy in the coming days. Caveats aside, Patrick says vaccination has more momentum than he's ever seen, with many in the egg industry behind it. I will be perfectly frank, I did not think we were going to get here two years ago.

So the fact that we are talking about it is pretty remarkable. Two years ago, at least when I was talking to people, they're like, you know, people toss it out. It was really talked about as like unfathomable that we would actually reach the point of vaccinating layer hens. And now it's like, nope, we got to do it. There's a lot of nuance to it. But we are closer than ever to vaccination.

Still, until there's a way to curb this bird flu outbreak or get cheaper eggs from elsewhere, Americans may just have to keep shelling out for pricey eggs. Back in Richmond, Virginia, Daquan Woodbury is thinking about how he's going to deal with these higher prices as time goes on, and he's considering a whole new dining concept. Maybe our star isn't breakfast anymore, right? So it's like, well, is that where we go? You know, we lean more on the coffee. You know, coffee is kind of a side gig for us, but our brand is breakfast.

Do we start saying, hey, can we rebrand ourselves into something that's like, hey, you can get an egg sandwich, but you don't have to. Maybe our culture now doesn't eat eggs as much. The way Daquan is talking, it's like the American breakfast itself is now at a crossroads. Call it an existential crisis.

I don't like this future that you're painting for us. That is a dark... I love eggs. Oh! Yeah. I don't like this future that you're painting for us. That is a dark, I love eggs. I love eggs. I love eggs. I love eggs. I love eggs. I love eggs. Daekwon, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.

Thank you. I appreciate you guys having me. And I look forward to egg expectations that the prices will go down, right? Right. Before you go, we've updated the episode to clarify the price range for a case of 15 dozen eggs, which can be more expensive at wholesalers than retail. Daquan showed us quotes he received from his vendor that ranged from $120 to $189 from day to day. That's all for today, Tuesday, February 25th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.