alt Hacker NewsThe egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemics, which also means that this is the least indicated time to get a backyard chicken. The US should have dropped battery caging, like the rest of the world did 15 years ago.
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I wonder if spreading the chickens out to all the backyards would prevent spread due to lower density, or if you'd get spread via wild animals anyhow and now it's just impossible to contain and more people are at direct risk.
> The egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemic
No, it's not. But that's what the egg companies want you to believe. In truth the number of egg laying hens is only down about 5% total since the beginning of the epidemic.
California, which dropped battery caging years ago, has been on of the states most hard hit. The real reason is that the US doesn't vaccinate it's chickens, which it mostly doesn't do because if it did, it couldn't export to several countries.
Same epidemic in Japan, egg shortages have been. A thing but the prices have hardly changed ?
You do realize that a lot of people don't buy the H5N1 epidemic thing, right?
Is H5N1 the cause of current egg prices, or an excuse? From the article:
Egg prices may be impacted for reasons beyond the scarcity of laying hens due to bird flu. Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, has written to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, requesting an investigation into “potential monopolization and anticompetitive coordination” by the egg industry. “While avian flu has been cited as the primary driver of skyrocketing egg prices, its actual impact on production has been minimal,” the group wrote. “Instead, dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power.