Paul Solman :
Egg prices once again no joke, the price for a dozen eggs, up 60 percent in a year. But why? Typically, some 300 million American hens lay some 90 billion American eggs every year. Seems like enough to go around. So why would prices suddenly take wing?
The answer appears to be the oldest cliche in economics, supply and demand. So first, supply. It’s been drastically reduced by the flu.
Here’s agricultural economist Jada Thompson.
Jada Thompson, University of Arkansas: Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or we kind of call it bird flu, is a disease of poultry. It leads to at least 75 percent mortality. And that’s in chickens. And this one is more like 90 to 94 percent mortality.
And so you have this huge mortality either dying from the disease or being depopulated in order to keep the viral loads down. And so as of November of last year to February of this year, I think we’re down 50 million egg-laying birds.
