Why are eggs so expensive?

The price of eggs in the U.S. has risen tremendously in recent years. In some areas, consumers are paying as much as $1 for one egg. Many articles attribute this rise to the USDA’s effort to stamp out the virus, which has led to the loss—through culling and disease—of at least 166 million birds since the latest outbreak began in February 2022. The loss of so many viable egg-laying hens and hens that had not yet reached maturity, has caused the price of eggs to rise to the highest level on record.

But on the 9th of this month, the Justice Department announced that it is investigating the egg price hikes. A few days later, egg prices dropped dramatically, with wholesale prices reportedly falling 54% over the past month. The decline is attributed to the absence of an avian flu outbreak and farmers rebuilding their flocks, while claims of price gouging by egg producers are said to have accelerated the decline. Small farmers and consumer advocates accuse the big egg producers of keeping prices high.　　　

The five largest producers, including Cal-Maine and Rose Acres, control roughly half of the U.S. egg market. Cal-Maine, a publicly traded company that controls about one-fifth of the market, reported an 82% jump in sales to $954 million for the quarter ended in late November, up from $523 million in the same period a year earlier. While the company attributes this surge “primarily to an increase in the net average selling price of shell eggs and an increase in the total volume sold,” some have suggested that the industry is limiting supply and forcing prices higher. Of course, the American Poultry and Egg Association denies collusion and says that the price increase is solely due to the bird flu situation. But is mass culling the best way to deal with bird flu?

Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms, is a sage of the sustainable food movement and a celebrity featured in the much-admired 2008 film “Food, Inc,” and talks about the treatment of bird flu in the video above.

Avian influenza outbreaks always begin in concentrated feed rearing facilities or certain industrial concentrated feed situations where the animals are raised in unsanitary conditions, drugged with vaccinations, and their feed is adulterated.
Industry tops insist that ducks, geese, and other wild creatures are carrying the bird flu virus. But all production systems that demonize wild animals are wrong.
If some of the chickens in the flock got sick but others did not, then we can protect the chickens that survived, pass on their genes, and breed them to build a stronger immune system.
However, the current government rule is to exterminate all the birds including uninfected healthy birds even if only one bird in a flock of 10,000 contracts avian influenza.
Back many years ago, when avian influenza hit Indochina, which came through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the UK did some experiments. They found that if a chicken eats two fresh blades of grass a day, she doesn’t get avian influenza.

Don’t you think Mr. Salatin’s explanation makes more sense? I don’t think disease resistance in nature comes from eradicating survivors, but from strengthening the remaining population through natural selection. The rejection of this basic principle by modern agriculture represents a disconnect with biological reality. I hope more farmers experiment and collect solid data about how eating two fresh blades of grass a day develops a stronger immunity against bird flu, and that the government will stop pushing farmers to cull birds. However, what is happening now is that instead of promoting this kind of natural environment-friendly egg farming, large amounts of government money are being spent on the development and production of avian influenza vaccines, and huge sums are being raised for gain-of-function research on the virus. A peer-reviewed study also found that the current H5N1 avian influenza strain may have leaked from a USDA laboratory.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where Anthony Fauci was the former director, funded extremely dangerous gain-of-function experiments that would enhance the airborne transmissibility of avian flu strains in mammals. And this experiments was funded by a $9.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation (2009). Many scientists are concerned about the dangers of this research. And as you know, the Gates Foundation has invested a large amount of money in avian flu vaccine development, and in January of this year, Arcturus Therapeutics, announced the initiation of a Phase 1 clinical trial of ARCT-2304, a self-replicating mRNA (sa-mRNA) vaccine designed to combat the H5N1 virus. The Gates Foundation gave $928,563 to Arcturus for this vaccine development.

Of course, there are many epidemiologists who are concerned about this vaccine. This is the same “self-replicating mRNA vaccine” as the KOSTAIVE, which was introduced in Japan last year. The Japanese self-amplified mRNA COVID-19 vaccine caused five deaths in a phase III trial, with nearly 90% of participants experiencing adverse events and 15.2% requiring medical attention. So, there is great concern that Arcturus Therapeutics’sH5N1 vaccine will also continue to grow mRNA indefinitely and produce a toxic antigen.

There are many doctors who once completely trusted vaccine became skeptical of safety after Covid. Those doctors suspect that the current avian flu “crisis” is a ploy for mass vaccination of animals and humans.

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