3 days Ago By Rachel Gabel
Any claims that the exorbitant price of commercially sold eggs in Colorado — if they are available in your grocery store — is due to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) rather than extremist-driven legislation is false. Colorado was hit hard by HPAI at a time when egg producers were already scrambling, if you will, to meet the unfunded mandatory production requirements that they produce eggs in a cage-free environment. This 2020 bill, HB20-1343, signed by Gov.
Polis as pasture-raised chickens flit around him, cost egg producers millions of dollars and will be in place on Jan. 1. At the time the bill was being kicked around, I reported that HB20-1343 avoided a ballot initiative threatened by World Animal Protection that would have required earlier transition to cage-free systems as well as prohibiting the sale of calves raised in veal crates or pork from sows raised in gestational crates.
The language of the bill was a collaboration between Colorado Egg Producers, the Colorado Department of Agriculture, and Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS).
Talk about a fox in the henhouse. The price increase anticipated was 2 cents per egg, though that hasn’t been the case, nor is it the case elsewhere in the country for cage-free eggs. The cost to egg producers was about $30 per hen.
The state’s laying hen flock is about 6 million. They may have avoided a ballot proposal, a favorite tactic of animal rights extremists that leaves Colorado agriculture sitting ducks, but between the cost of the shift to cage-free systems and losses due to HPAI, the state’s egg producers are reeling. Normally, eggs could be brought in from other states to fill the gap between consumer demand and supply, especially in holiday baking season, but in a mess identical to the pork price and supply in California brought on by Prop 12, there are fewer eggs that meet arbitrary production method requirements that can legally be brought into the state’s egg coolers.
The bill was a solution looking for a problem and it found one. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of a dozen eggs in the U.S.
in November of 2004 was $1.09. In November of 2024, the price was $3.
65, down from a high of $4.82 in January of 2023. I purchased a 12-count pack of store brand eggs at my local Safeway on Dec.
24 for $4.49. I realize this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison because the price of eggs reflected by the BLS is for conventionally raised eggs and herein lies part of the problem.
I checked the price of a dozen conventionally produced eggs at Walmart stores in Springfield, Missouri, Houston, Texas, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Billings, Montana and across the board, the price of a dozen eggs was $3.97. The American food supply is consumer driven and comprised of a combination of domestically produced and imported products.
Shoppers can vote with their grocery dollar and that’s the beauty of it. My sister lives in a fancy part of Houston, Texas, and she can purchase a dozen eggs for $3.97.
She can pay a premium, if she chooses, and select cage free or brown or locally raised or quail eggs. Her local store offers a dozen cage-free, store brand eggs for $4.66.
That tells me the egg market in Colorado isn’t reeling from a shortage due to HPAI, but is offering cage-free eggs at the price comparable to cage-free eggs elsewhere. The problem, of course, is for consumers living in the margins and trying to stretch their food dollars, the less expensive option is off the proverbial table in Colorado. The ability to choose to purchase the eggs that align with my budget and my values as they relate to food production has been removed by misguided legislation in Colorado.
Legislation of the dinner plate is a wildly elitist tactic that is an easy sell to consumers who are willing to listen to marketing campaigns. It’s time that consumers view proposed legislation coming down the pike with an eye for the consequences it will bring to the numbers at the bottom of their receipt. The perceived happiness of a chicken remains less important than the ability of a parent to put healthy proteins on the table on a budget and Colorado families deserve better.
Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication..
