Here's Why You're Having A Hard Time Finding Eggs At The Grocery Store

If you’ve taken a trip to your local grocery store lately, you may have noticed that the cost of eggs has gone up, or you may have had a hard time finding cartons of eggs altogether. The bird flu, also known as the avian influenza , has caused a shortage of eggs across the United States — and you might be feeling the effects for a while. The strain of avian influenza, caused by the H5N1 virus, was detected in the U.

S. in 2022. It has been spreading among wild birds, poultry and other animals, affecting over 136 million birds so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



And millions of chickens at poultry farms across the country have been killed to prevent the spread of disease . And on Monday, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) announced that the U.S.

has reported its first outbreak of another strain of bird flu: H5N9. The H5N9 strain was detected on a farm in California, where H5N1 was also detected, Reuters reported . Egg price increases have been largely traced back to the bird flu, which has put a strain on the supply of egg-laying hens.

Restaurants and grocery stores have increased the price of eggs as a result of higher wholesale prices, and some supermarkets have placed limits on the number of cartons shoppers can buy due to supply issues. “This is the most devastating wave of the bird flu outbreak we’ve seen since it began to spread three years ago,” Karyn Rispoli, the egg managing editor at Expana, a firm that collects and tracks the price of eggs, told The New York Times in an article published last week. “And this time around farms that cater to the retail sector have been disproportionately impacted and that is leaving a big, gaping hole.

” And shoppers everywhere have been sharing their own experiences with seeing shelves once filled with cartons of eggs, now empty. “There were literally NO eggs at the store,” one person on X , formerly Twitter, wrote on Monday. “No eggs at Costco when I went shopping last night,” wrote another .

And wholesalers and farmers predict that we may feel the effects of this for a while . Brian Moscogiuri, vice president at Eggs Unlimited, a wholesaler in California, told the Times that he believes it could take about six months for the market to stabilize amid such a shortage. “We need to see outbreaks of avian influenza stop,” he said.

“We need a period of time when the farms aren’t being impacted and can repopulate their chickens, and we need to see demand start to slow down.” Other projections suggest issues may continue well into 2025 . What you should know about bird flu spread and safely storing your eggs at home.

With so many things to think about as we learn more about the bird flu, you may be wondering how to best preserve and store the eggs you have at home amid the current egg shortage. The U.S.

Food & Drug Administration offers several egg safety storing tips to keep in mind. For starters, the agency recommends that you store your eggs in a clean refrigerator at 40° or below. You should store eggs in their original carton, and use them within three weeks for best quality, the FDA states.

If you want to freeze whole eggs, the FDA does not recommend you freeze them in their shells. Instead, the agency advises that you beat the whole egg, and freeze the yolks and egg whites together — or you can just freeze the egg whites by themselves. If you decide to freeze your eggs — whether whole or egg whites alone — you should consume the frozen egg within one year.

As for protecting yourself from bird flu, there’s no need for the general public to panic overall right now.The Centers for Disease Control states that the current public health risk for the avian influenza is low, and that they are still monitoring the H5N1 virus and how it impacts people with animal exposures. The first death associated with the H5N1 virus in the U.

S. was reported earlier this month, however, health officials said the person, who lived in Louisiana, was older than 65, had underlying medical problems, and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. Dr.

Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island, previously told HuffPost in December that her “greatest fear” was for people who are exposed to the virus directly, such as farm workers. And if you’re concerned about the safety of eating eggs amid the outbreaks of bird flu, health officials advise that eating eggs is safe as long as they’re cooked to an appropriate temperature. “Cooking poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 ̊F kills bacteria and viruses, including avian influenza A viruses,” the CDC states.

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