Today, Explained - Eggs aren't expensive enough

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

At least if we want to stop the next pandemic. Vox's Kenny Torrella explains. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Empty shelves of eggs in a New York City supermarket. Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A New York City bodega recently started selling what they're calling loosey eggs. Instead of a dozen or half dozen, you can buy a little bag with three little eggs in it. The idea got a ton of attention. It's not loose cigarettes, but loose eggs drawing people to Pamela's green deli. He says the idea to sell the loose eggs came after seeing customers being forced to leave a full carton on the counter. Currently New York State requires eggs to be sold in packages and while the

price of eggs is cracking wallets right now Rodriguez tells us he just hopes to help his community one day at a time. Eggs are too expensive. Ask anyone. Ask the President of the United States. The eggs, because I'm hearing so much about eggs, you'll figure it out. You've got to figure something out fast. But on Today Explained, Vox's Kenny Torello is actually going to make the case that eggs are too cheap. Get a load of this guy, will ya?

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["It's, It's, It's a Day of Swag"] Kenny Torella, senior reporter at Vox, our man on the meat beat. It's been a minute. What is going on with the bird flu? The bird flu is really bad. This outbreak, which has been the worst in US history, it began in early 2022 and it's only getting worse. According to the USDA, avian flu has been confirmed in 146 flocks in the past month,

affecting more than 20 million birds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is calling this multi-year bird flu outbreak the largest unit in U.S. history. The impact hits close to home. Dozens of state and federal agricultural workers dressed in biohazard suits, sanitized boots and gloves are assisting in the euthanization of the entire flock here, 100,000 ducks. This strain known as H5N1,

it's a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza or bird flu, which has been highly lethal to birds raised for meat and eggs, like chickens and turkeys. You know, more than 20 million egg lane hens were killed, either because they became infected with the virus or they were killed to slow the spread of the virus. To put that into perspective,

that's 6% of America's egg lane flock. Is that why the eggs are so expensive, Kenny? I don't want to make this about the eggs when you just said 20 million of our friendly chickens have died, but is that why the eggs are so expensive? That's really the only reason why eggs are so expensive aside from food inflation. The bird flu has led to egg shortages across the country. Some stores are even placing limits on how many cartons consumers can buy. Can someone explain to me why people are going crazy for eggs?

Eggs are now so valuable, they become a target for thieves. Pete and Jerry's organics had to beef up security after thieves stole 100,000 eggs from their farm in Pennsylvania. And the average price for a dozen of eggs is double now what it was before this outbreak began three years ago. All right, guys, today is a day. I know they're going to be a dollar 99 today. Oh, chickens must be on a strike or something because baby ain't no way six eggs is for 99.

The high price of eggs. It's not the only problem related to bird flu, because it's increasingly affecting other animals. Scientists detected bird flu in cows for the first time ever in the United States, almost a year ago. And since then, it's infected almost 1000 dairy cow herds. But it's also infecting and killing other mammals like sea lions and seals. And it even killed a cheetah and a mountain lion

at a zoo in Arizona not too long ago. I don't love it. Yeah there's not much to love about the bird flu especially because it's now hitting humans. I don't love that at all tell me more about that. Yeah almost 70 people in the U.S. have tested positive for bird flu since the spring of 2022. You know we're not doing mass testing, so it could be higher. But most of them have been people who work with poultry or dairy cows, and most cases have been somewhat mild. But there have been a few cases that have stood out and have concerned experts. For example, last month, there was a woman in Louisiana.

She had exposure to a backyard chicken flock and also some wild birds. She got the bird flu. She was hospitalized and tragically she passed away from the virus. And in November, a 13 year old Canadian girl who had no known exposure to wild or farmed birds or dairy cows, she developed a really severe infection and

was hospitalized for weeks. She recovered but it's still a mystery as to how she got it. But we're not at like you know the pandemic threat yet either. I don't want to freak people out. No we're not. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that almost all of these cases, again, were connected to people who work directly with animals or were exposed to animals, uh, who had the virus. At this point, this virus is not going from person to person, which is one of the key ingredients for a virus, you know, going from one that just circulates among animals to the next global

pandemic. And H5N1 may never gain the ability to transmit from human to human, but the more that it circulates among people and animals and large farms, the more opportunities that it has to evolve and develop the capacity to become more severe in humans and be able to transmit from person to person. Well, our fair president, I don't know how much he's said about bird flu. I don't know how much he cares, but he certainly has promised to bring down the price of eggs. The eggs, because I'm hearing so much about eggs, you'll figure it out. You got to figure something out. And since they're intrinsically related, let me ask, how's that going so far?

It's gotten off to a rocky start. You know, Doge and the Trump administration fired a number of employees who monitor bird flu, realized they made a mistake, and then hired them back. But in bigger news today, Brooke Rawlins announced a big plan in the Wall Street Journal to fight bird flu and try to bring down the price of eggs. I'm sorry, Brooke who? Brooke Rawlins. She's the new Secretary of Agriculture who has not much of a background in agriculture,

more in conservative think tank policymaking, but she does have a new five point plan to tackle this crisis. Okay, well, what are the five points? policymaking, but she does have a new five point plan to tackle this crisis. Okay. Well, what are the five points? Point one is to put $500 million towards increased biosecurity on farms. That includes things like more protective gear for farm workers, requiring them to shower before entering and leaving the facilities. And this could help.

It's worth a shot, but this has also been a main tactic of the Biden administration. So we'll see if it helps. OK, five hundred million dollars for some cold showers. What else? Increased funding for farmers who have to call or kill their flocks. Again, this is more of the same. This is something the Biden administration has done for the last three years. Hmm. OK. Anything fresh, anything new? Yes and no.

I mean, one point of the plan is to import more eggs, which is what the Obama administration did during the 2015 bird flu outbreak. And then there are some other ideas like trying to roll back cage free egg laws, which we're seeing some states already trying to do and vaccines, which is actually welcome news. Well, I know president Trump has a history with, you know, vaccinating millions of Americans, Operation Warp Speed, TBT, COVID-19, etc. But his new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Roberts Flouride Kennedy, hates

vaccines. How does he feel about vaccinating chickens, though? Well, thankfully, that's the purview of the USDA. So RFK Jr. has no oversight over whether birds get vaccinated. Of course, I am worried that if this does start to transmit to more humans, he will have oversight over the development and distribution and approval of vaccines for people.

But at least right now, it's in the USDA's hands as to whether we start vaccinating egg lane hens. Okay. So we've got five points, Kenny, ranging from more showers for people working on these chicken farms to vaccinating millions, hundreds of millions of chickens potentially, do we have any idea when this five point plan from Brooke Rollins would go into effect?

I mean, we've got the Wall Street Journal op-ed. When do we see the money moving? It's unclear. There's not a lot of specifics as to when and how this money will be deployed and how fast they'll act on things like expanding vaccine development. So it's more of a wait and see situation like the last few years have been with bird flu. Okay, but this issue isn't going anywhere.

What's cooking in the meantime? So some states are taking matters into their own hands. Tonight, the Nevada Department of Agriculture has suspended the state's cage-free egg law. As the price of eggs continues to climb, one state lawmaker has introduced legislation that will repeal Michigan's new law requiring all eggs sold to be cage-free. The idea here is that by suspending this cage-free requirement, it'll give grocery stores more flexibility in where and how they source their eggs. But it probably won't work.

There was one ag economist at the University of Arkansas who said that suspending these cage free standards could quote unquote, very slightly address the egg shortage in Nevada, but it could exacerbate it in other states because the national egg supply is just so limited. So if you shift more to Nevada, you got to take it from another state. Huh.

Yeah. Ultimately, a big part of the problem here is factory farming itself. You know, a typical egg factory farm operation will house hundreds of thousands or even millions of genetically similar animals in just a few barns and in these barns, the animals, they're in their own waste, they're breathing in toxic fumes from their manure, they're overcrowded. All of this comes together to stress them out and weaken their immune systems. And one historian who studies animal disease, who I I talked to said that these kinds of conditions create the perfect opportunity for a microbe or a virus like H5N1 to effectively spread

through a lot of hosts. This doesn't mean that reverting back to the farming that we had a century ago where chickens were raised in small flocks on small farms would fix the problem of the bird flu spread. Farmers have always been battling disease outbreaks on farms, but the expansion of factory farms really exacerbate the risk. And because these farms are so big and have so many chickens,

if the virus affects just a few really big farms, it can send a shock to the egg supply overnight, which is what has been going on for the last several months. Okay, so the culprit is factory farming, but also the norm is factory farming. Yeah, and it rarely grabs the country's attention. We don't really talk that much about factory farming. You know, we're only doing this show because of this outbreak and how it's affected egg prices and the egg supply.

But there are millions of people in rural America who have been dealing with the public health effects of factory farms for decades. And many have been sounding the alarm, but no one's really been listening. So I spent the last several months talking to them for a series for Vox. And you're going to hear from them when we're back on Today Explained. Aww. Support for Today Explained comes from Shopify. Business owners have a lot of spinning plates to balance. Frankly, it's kind of amazing that anyone is crazy enough to take on the challenge of

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Kenny Turella, Meatbeat, Vox.com, Factory Farms are in the spotlight because of expensive eggs and bird flu and you've been reporting on them. Where do we begin? So let's start in Malcolm, Iowa. Malcolm? Yep. In the middle? Yeah, it's actually in in Malcolm, Iowa. Malcolm? Yep. In the middle? Yeah, it's actually in the middle of Iowa.

I went there in September. It's this tiny, sleepy town about 75 miles east of Des Moines. There's just a couple hundred people. There's a post office, a bar and grill, a lot of corn fields. And on the surface, it's a generally quiet and peaceful small town, except it has millions of chickens. Seven and a half million chickens, to be exact. How many people does it have?

270 people. Oh, what? Okay, so that's like roughly what? Off the top of my head, like 28,000 chickens per person. That's right. You must be some kind of math prodigy. I didn't know that, Sean. I'm Asian.

Yeah, and I talked to a few folks in Malcolm. One of them stood out. Her name is Carolyn Bittner. It was probably a few days after I moved in that I smelled anything. She moved to Malcolm in 2008 to become a pastor at two churches, she's now retired. And she told me that she really likes small town rural life and that neighbors are kind to each other.

Except this one neighbor, Fremont Farms of Iowa. That's the farm that has 7.5 million egg lane chickens. It's not close to my house, but when they move manure, the stench is sickening. And just last night, there was stench. And as soon as I got to Malcolm, I understood what Carolyn was saying. There's the smell. Oh.

The stench of manure hung in the air and the closer you got to Fremont Farms of Iowa, the stronger and stronger it smelled. It was overwhelming. I love to hang my clothes on the line to dry. And sometimes in the morning, when I put them out, the air is clean because the wind is going the other way. But if the wind shifts while they're out there,

and especially if it shifts while they're still damp, I bring them in, not smelling fresh and ozone-y, but smelling like chicken shit. Damn. Yeah, livestock farms generate nearly a trillion pounds of manure each year. And fumes from that manure creates terrible air pollution, which is linked to nine times more premature deaths than coal-fired power plants. This isn't like a happy story where like a trillion pounds of manure gets turned into a trillion pounds of fertilizer and recycles and closes the loop and all that.

Well there's just simply way too much manure for it to all serve as fertilizer. So often farmers will over apply manure which one it smells really bad but it also leaches into water, contaminates drinking water, and other issues. On top of that, other research has found that living near a factory farm is positively associated with risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, and people who live near them also report higher rates

of headaches, depression, anger, and respiratory symptoms such as asthma. Okay, that sounds worse than awful, Kenny. Why would you want to live here in Malcolm, Iowa, next to the manure? Well, Carolyn moved to Malcolm for a job. She didn't know that there were also seven and a half million chickens in town. Huh. And I've heard that from other people, that maybe they moved there and they didn't know, or maybe they've lived there for a lot of their lives and the factory farms started

coming in in the 90s and the early 2000s and they had no choice but to just deal with it. You know, Carolyn has tried to speak up for years and tell the farm about how terrible it smells. She's also spoken up at permit hearings too. What did she said? How's that gone? It hasn't gone that well. I mean, nothing has changed.

If anything, it's gotten worse because the chicken farm now has more animals than it did when she first moved in 2008. And a lot of this just comes down to public policy. You know, the problem is that the deck is stacked against Carolyn and people like her because usually local, county, and state permitting regulations are really lax. They're really friendly to the meat, dairy, and egg industries.

They allow these massive factory farms to come in, to be built really close to people's homes, to churches, and schools, and businesses. to people's homes, to churches and schools and businesses. And there's also usually pretty lax rules around how they handle that collective trillion pounds of manure. And she told me that while Fremont Farms is doing fine, the town is kind of disappearing. The population here in Malcolm has been declining since I moved in. Partly, I'm sure, it's because of the smell.

It's just not a very pleasant place to live anymore. So Malcolm cares more about this farm and the revenue it brings in than it does the people who might bounce. It seems so. And, you know, I've talked to a bunch of people in similar circumstances. You know, there are thousands and thousands of these huge factory farms across the country. You know, there are wounds in this neighborhood

that frankly will never heal. One person I talked to, her name is Sonia in Minnesota. She says that fights over big dairy operations and pig factory farms near her have torn her community apart. Deep, deep wounds in this neighborhood. And, you know, a wave of the hand is now met with, you know, a wave of the middle finger, that's how things operate. Yeah.

And there's Edith in Worth County, Iowa, who told me that a lot of her neighbors won't speak publicly against the factory farms near them. People are afraid to speak out. They'll lose friends. You know, they'll lose money opportunities. Small business people really have to watch it because even if they support being against factory farms, they'll lose business customers. Okay, so not only are we killing millions and millions of chickens and not even eating

them because of bird flu, and not only are eggs more expensive across the entire country but just living near these farms is a shit show. President Trump says he wants to do something about the price of eggs. He's got Elon Musk at his side, I don't know what his diet is, but he's also got RFK at his other side and that dude's always going on about factory farms and agriculture in the United States and how we need to fix it. I spent a lot of my career suing factory farms. And I probably sued Smithfield more than any other attorney, Tyson's, Perdue. Is there an opportunity to hit reset right now?

Yeah, RFK Jr. over the years has really criticized factory farming. In fact, for 20 years, he was the president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is this group that does really great work to combat water pollution from these huge farms. But I have my doubts that he's going to really do much to shake up the agricultural status quo here. How come? Because he wasn't put in charge of agriculture? Yeah, that's right. He's in charge of HHS,

which includes the U.S US Food and Drug Administration, but it's the Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency who are really in charge of regulating farms and all of this pollution. It sounds like what you're saying, Kenny, is that the only way this would actually change and there'd be enough attention on factory farming to actually achieve political change would be if there were something as

Catastrophic as like a bird flu pandemic Maybe I mean maybe if we get to a point where we're rationing eggs, even then it's a maybe, I mean, you know, in 2009 over 10,000 Americans died from swine flu, which originated in pigs. And today pig factory farming looks exactly like it did in 2009. So it's hard to say what, if anything, could push the country to really rethink how we raise animals for food. And I'm not even sure a major bird flu pandemic could do it. So that leaves us where it's on us, the consumers, to make different choices.

That's true. We've become really accustomed to cheap eggs and other animal products. And I think visiting Iowa and hearing stories from people like Carolyn, you come to realize that there is a cost to these cheap eggs and other products. There's a cost to the environment. There's a cost to people who live in rural America near factory farms. There's a cost to the animals who are treated really terribly. So yeah, there's always gonna be this tension and trade-off. You know, we can opt to eat fewer eggs.

We can eat egg alternative products like plant-based eggs. We can also use this as an opportunity to learn more about the factory farming system and maybe rethink how we produce food. I hope that's the one kind of silver lining of this terrible bird food outbreak is that it gives us time to pause and think about how we might raise food

in a more humane and sustainable way. way. Kenny Torella Vox.com. He also makes music. In fact, all of the music you heard on today's show came from Kenny, who goes by Torello when he's dropping beats. Kenny's reporting was supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from the Builders Initiative, and Vox's future Perfect Fellow Sam Delgado assisted with Kenny's reporting. Thank you, Sam. Miles Bryan produced this episode, Amina Al-Sadi edited,

Laura Bullard fact-checked, Andrea Christensdottir, and Patrick Boyd mixed. I'm Sean Rames for a Minute's Today Explained. Go Birds!