Re: Egg pricing spiking

On 9/25/2024 11:50 AM, JTEM wrote:

  RonO wrote:
 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/25/business/egg-prices-groceries- inflation- bird-flu/index.html
>
They note that this is due to avian influenza

 It started years ago. Years. Plural.

The previous avian influenza outbreak in 2022 that decimated layer flocks was not H5N1, but another strain of high path avian influenza. H5N1 did enter the country around 2022, but seemed to be infecting mammals and wild birds.  There was a poultry farm that was infected with H5N1 and one poultry worker got infected.  H5N1 made it down to South America and was killing aquatic mammals like seals, and infected goats in North America.
They knew that they could prevent poultry farms from going down if they identified infected herds and prevented dairy workers from going from farm to farm, but the USDA and CDC decided not to do contact tracing, nor identify infected herds, and only recommeded that dairy workers in contact with infected animals should not go to other farms.  The virus was allowed to spread from herds that were never identified as being infected.
Ron Okimoto

 There's been media coverage going back quite a while.
 Egg prices are actually LOWER now, with this present spike:
 : Before February 2022, the average cost of a dozen had largely stayed
: below $2 since March 2016.
 https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/why-are-eggs-so-expensive
 The story also blames bird flu but the facts to not align with the
narrative. For one thing, chickens just plain don't remain productive
egg layers for that long! Two years is about the best you're ever
going to get out of them. So anything that had been exposed to bird flu
in 2022 is dead. It's gone.
 The one egg farmer I knew had them laying for about two years when
they were done he took a paused. It was time for cleanup, prepare for
the next batch...
 , but they do not note that

nearly all the commercial flocks were infected by the dairy H5N1 influenza virus.  The flock infections is due to the USDA and CDC refusing to identify all the infected dairy herds and contributed to the spread of the virus, and infection of commercial poultry flocks due to contact with dairy workers.

 It's probably just bullshit, like the fake chip shortage. Higher food
prices are a goal. In Europe they're forcing farms to close and telling
them they shouldn't eat more than 10 grams of meat per day.
 Here? Packing plants have closed, super market shelves have gotten thin,
it's now not the least bit unusual to see empty shelves.