EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza — commonly known as the bird flu — has devastated egg farmers across the country and created a strain on egg supply and demand that has trickled down to local business here in El Paso.
“It’s really hard because sometimes we put the orders for eggs and they don’t arrive, or they’re short, so the production has to stop until we send someone to search through the city to see where we can find eggs. And also it’s really expensive now because there’s a real shortage,” said Prisma Perez, a team leader at the Artesana Bakery, located in East El Paso.
On multiple occasions for the past couple of months, the Artesana Bakery has had to temporarily halt production when wholesalers were not able to deliver their order of eggs.
Perez said that on a daily basis they require approximately 30 dozen eggs to fulfill their production. Two months ago, she said it would cost them just north of $50 to place that order, but that it has since almost doubled
“It is almost $100 for the boxes of eggs that we usually use, and that has been hard. We have to increase prices. (Otherwise), we wouldn’t be able to buy them anymore. And like I said, everything here is made from scratch. So it’s not possible for us to buy something prepared already,” Perez said.
Almost every item on the bakery’s menu is made with egg and because they make all their products from scratch — including the flour — Perez said they haven’t been able to offset when there have been egg shortages by buying ready-made flour.
According to the American Egg Board (AEB) — a national non-profit dedicated to supporting egg farmers across the country and promoting the demand for eggs — the U.S lost nearly 50 million laying hens in the past year, and over 14 million birds in just the past four weeks due to the bird flu.
“These two forces combined — tight supply and high demand — are directly causing the spike in wholesale prices we’ve seen recently, as well as intermittent shortages of eggs at some retail locations and in different parts of the country. Although each retailer decides how much they’re going to sell eggs for in the store, higher wholesale prices usually impact retail prices,” the AEB said in a statement.
The AEB also said that because egg farmers have experience in dealing with a strained supply system before, they expect the shortages to remain localized and short-lived as they work to recover from the bird flu outbreak.
“It’s going to take a sustained period with no additional HPAI detections on egg farms to stabilize supply,” the AEB said.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said that migrating waterfowl, like ducks and geese, have been primarily responsible for the current bird flu outbreak across the country, transmitting the disease to poultry populations at egg farms.
Miller said, however, that because the waterfowl will be migrating back up north in about 24 days, egg farmers have a better chance of replenishing their flocks faster.
“We can hatch a chicken in 28 days. So within six months, we can have our poultry population back to normal if we don’t have any more outbreaks,” Miller said.
Miller said that during this outbreak, Texas poultry flocks have not been affected by the bird flu, which is why Texans aren’t seeing as severe a strain on egg supply as states like Georgia, North and South Carolina.
“We haven’t had any instances of (infected) dairy cattle in Texas. No poultry flocks or commercial poultry flocks have been infected here in Texas. So, we missed the bullet. The local egg supply in Texas is still pretty good, but the price has gone up because there’s just not enough eggs to go around,” Miller said.
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