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

Struggling to find eggs or noticing the price for a carton is ridiculously high? Here's what's happening and if it'll change anytime soon.

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.”