Cracking the case on rising egg prices

DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) — For the past two years, a fatal strain of bird flu has caused egg prices to jump.

"This is really a high path of avian influenza that's impacting birds specifically ... and see we are seeing, unfortunately, in the last couple of months, a lot of those outbreaks have been occurring where, birds have been sickened," said Tasha Bunting, the Director for Commodity Programs and Food Systems at the Illinois Farm Bureau.

And egg producers are still working to recover their losses from the Wabash Valley Production Plant fire from last year.

"So with that fire being in one location, that obviously takes a significant number of product off the market," said Bunting.

Bigger groups of farmers are working to try and fill the need.

"Those larger farms are really working to find ways that they can either diversify and sort of change up their system a little bit, clean their barns and get biosecurity programs implemented as quickly as possible so that they can start repopulating and start gaining back to build up their supply," said Bunting.

The current high prices are helping producers get back to sustainable levels.

"The increase in retail price is enabling those producers to be able to continue to get to a more sustainable place, where they are increasing their production levels and able to operate in a normal structure, in a normal system," said Bunting.

The price could start to come down this year.

"So hopefully as we move into 2025 and things start to settle down with some of the avian influenza outbreaks and getting things back on the market, said Bunting. "We'll start to see some relief in those prices."