Egg Prices: The Science Behind Rising Costs

[0:01] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. Coming up, we look at the science and facts surrounding high egg prices in the United States. Then we examine a recent bill introduced in the Ohio legislature that once again would try to force religion into public school classrooms. In this case, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:42] Music. One of the political things that came up during the election, the most recent election, was complaints about egg prices. Inflation in general, but egg prices specifically. Towards the end of the, within the last, like from the summer until the fall, inflation steadily declined. Egg prices did not. And so, you know, people were thinking that it was an economic issue. Producers said it was the bird flu. And the bird flu is a contagious thing that infects animals. Animals and one of the reasons why it affected the egg supply is because of the millions of birds millions of chickens slaughtered to try to contain the bird flu and so when you hit standard economics when you reduce the supply but the demand doesn’t decrease then the prices go up, or if there is plenty of supply, but no demand, then prices typically go down. At least, in theory, that’s supposed to how it works.

[2:15] And so, the Associated Press had an article that said, what’s behind the record egg prices? And when I tell you record egg prices, this is what I mean.

[2:27] Probably a year or two ago, you could go to your local supermarket and purchase a dozen eggs for about $2 a dozen, maybe less. A lot of times grocery stores, at least the major grocery chains, would use eggs as a loss leader. And what that means is that they would sell this item for a lower price than what it costs them in order to draw you into the store because then they knew that you would buy other items. So you would go to the store and get 89 cents a dozen eggs, but you might buy, you know, $20 worth of meat or, you know, whatever. They do that with, they used to do that with eggs. I don’t think they do that with eggs currently, but eggs, milk, butter, sugar, you know, the staples, they would sometimes sell them at a loss in order to draw you into the store. So fast forward to recently, just this past week, I went to the store and they had a dozen eggs in my supermarket for $5.19 a dozen. You know, that’s double, more than double, triple the price from just a year or ago.

[3:51] In some places, it’s even higher than $5.19, depending on how you get the eggs. For example, eggs that are raised in non-factory farms, where they spend a little bit more time taking care of the chickens and making sure that they have a good life and they’re not abused or get chemicals and things like that, usually that costs more to raise it. Because, see, here’s the thing about, in particular, eggs. A lot of the companies that sell eggs, like the major supermarkets, they source these eggs from factory farms. And what you have is you have multiple buildings, usually, with millions, literally millions of chickens.

[4:48] Cooped up together with barely enough room to move around and they’re laying eggs. So you’re getting these almost millions of eggs. It’s, I don’t know how many eggs a chicken would lay, a good number of eggs. And so your mass, what you’re doing is you’re mass producing the eggs. And when you do it this way for the major producers, it’s not a very high cost, right? Um, just juxtapose that I have a friend of mine who not before the egg prices went up, but just as a matter of, uh, personal preference, they decided to get some egg laying chickens, and raise them and get the, and get the eggs. Well, the other day she had a meme on her Facebook, uh, account that showed a picture of a dozen eggs that she had collected from her chickens. And she started out her post by saying, this dozen eggs cost me $2,000.

[6:03] And you’re like, what? And here from the feeding and taking care of these chickens and the other parts of taking care of the chickens and raising them and getting them to lay eggs, cost her $2,000 to raise these chickens. And so she told people in this post, do not do what she did.

[6:33] You know, because a lot of people do that nowadays because of the egg prices. They’re saying, you know, we’ll just get two or three chickens, depending on your municipality regulations. We’ll get two or three chickens and we’ll have all the fresh eggs that we want. And it’s not that easy. as my friend demonstrated that it cost her $2,000 and she had probably six to eight laying hens and it cost her that much just for feed and upkeep and taking care of the chickens. So, you know, you’re like thinking, well, I want cheap eggs. Well, if you want cheap eggs, then you have to put up with the factory farming. And that’s not very good. One of the things, one of the problems with factory farming is that when there is disease or some kind of sickness coming through, it will affect the entire flock. And that’s what’s been happening.

[7:33] And so the Associated Press had this article the other day. It says, what’s behind the record egg prices? And it said the industry and most experts squarely blame bird flu. More than 166 million birds have been slaughtered to contain the virus. Some 30 million egg layers have been wiped out since January, significantly disrupting egg supplies. Now, again, these factory farms, and there’s quite a few of them here in Ohio, they literally have millions of hens in these pens. So when you’re talking 30 million egg layers have been wiped out, that is a significant number. It’s a significant number anyway.

[8:22] It says the Department of Agriculture’s longstanding policy has been to kill entire flocks anytime the virus is found on a farm. And this has been done before. Years ago, bird flu erupted down south and they killed a lot of chickens. It says as a result, the number of egg layers has dropped nationwide by about 12 percent from before the outbreak to 292 million birds, according to a February 1st USDA estimate. But another 11 million egg layers have been killed since then, so it’s likely worse. When prices spiked to $4.82 two years ago and prompted initial calls for price gouging probes, the flock was above $300 million.

[9:09] It says, This has nothing to do with anything other than bird flu, and I think to suggest anything else is a misreading of the facts and the reality. American Egg Board President Emily Metz said, Our farmers are in a fight for their lives, period, full stop, and they’re doing everything they can to keep these birds safe. This is a supply challenge due to bird flu, nothing else. Then it talks about farm action suspects monopolistic behavior. The group that lobbies on behalf of smaller farmers, consumers, and rural communities notes that egg production is only down about 4% from last year, and some 7.57 billion table eggs were produced last month. Yet some consumers are still finding eggshells empty at their local grocery store. Dominant egg corporations are blaming Avion Flu for the price hikes that we’re seeing, but while the egg supply has fallen only slightly, these company profits have soared. And basically what it is, the egg producers have been caught previously trying to limit the domestic supply of eggs to increased prices.

[10:17] And they lost a court case in 2023. Of course, they’re also talking about in this article about inflation costs for feed and fuel and labor have contributed to rising egg prices. So I fully believe that egg prices would have gone up without the bird flu. I think the bird flu made it worse. Because when you restrict the supply, then you’ve got a lot of companies that take advantage of it. They just do. You know, they’re going, the market, when you’re taught about a free market or a capitalistic market, the price is what somebody is willing to pay for your product. Right. Unless there’s some kind of regulation or law on it that controls the pricing, the price is going to be what people pay. And when you’re talking about eggs, that’s a commodity.

[11:15] So those are things that people are going to spend money on because they are used in a lot of different things. Um, and of course, this is also the price of eggs have also, uh, trickled down to, uh, trickled down, uh, to the local, um, local businesses that use eggs like restaurants and, and bakeries and, and other, other people. Uh there was just the other day a friend of mine shared a note from a restaurant that she went to where they upcharged added a two dollar a two dollar upcharge to every bill to cover the cost of eggs now two dollars would pay for probably two-thirds of a dozen of eggs and and And they are charging every customer $2.

[12:11] So that means they must be paying more than $5 a dozen for their eggs, which would make sense. Usually when you’re buying small quantities, you’re going to be probably charged more. And then this also played into conservatives’ complaints because Michigan recently had a law that went into effect that encouraged more, but less factory farming for eggs. And so some of their egg prices have really gone up and people are blaming the law. And it’s just a kind of a mishmash of things coming together. You have the bird flu, the profit-taking, and then this new law coming into effect. And so people are concerned that they’re going to have to pay a high price for eggs for a long time, and they probably will. I also know in this AP article that I read that it could take up to a year for farmers to replace their flocks. Again they they slaughter the entire flock when the bird flu arrives just to be safe and they’ve done that with other animals when when they had the mad cow disease that came through.

[13:35] They would slaughter entire herds and that raised the price of beef for for a long time because they, and, and the price of milk too, um, also went up. Basically what I wanted to point out with this, with these egg prices is, you know, the takeaways from it is that we’ve been getting cheap eggs for a long time for marketing purposes. You know, we haven’t, we, I don’t believe we’ve really paid the true cost of producing those eggs for many, many years.

[14:12] Uh, cause like I said, a lot of the grocery store chains use as a loss leader to bring you in the store. So they’re charging less than what it really costs. So that’s one thing. Then you had the bird flu where you reduced the stock available by 10, 12%. That’s going to have an effect on prices. Then you have a little bit of price gouging. You have these producers that are taking advantage of it by jacking up their price. They claim to cover their higher production costs, but it’s not higher production costs. They are just charging now for the cost that they used to not charge for because they can. And again, the market is what the people, what the market will pay for. The price is what the market will pay for, not what is the true cost or what it should be.

[15:06] And so that’s, I just kind of want to talk about a little bit of facts about the egg prices, a little bit about the science. The bird flu is something we need to keep an eye out. Just recently in Texas, I guess there was a man who caught the bird flu, even though the bird flu isn’t known to jump to humans. But you never know. And now we have a government, a federal administration that is pretty much anti-science. So they don’t support scientific research. They think they know better. So that could be a problem going forward.

[15:44] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[15:58] We have a couple of fundraising opportunities with the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Geary that maybe some of you might want to take part in. The first is that we are participating in the Here for Good program through Jupe Mode, the t-shirt company that is based here in Toledo. And what they do once a year is they invite nonprofits and other organizations to come in and, and either they’ll design a shirt for you, or if you have a design and they’ll create a sales page for you. And then you’ll sell these shirts. People order these shirts and the participating group will get a, a share of that, that money. And it’s a real good deal. Uh, Sholi is participating for the first time this year and, and the sale is live. It’s going from March the 3rd through March 23rd. It is a pre-sale, which means that you order it ahead of time.

[17:06] And then at the end of the sale date, after the 23rd, then the shirts are produced and then they’re sent out. And so this will be a very good opportunity as I sent it to my friends and members in the group said that this is a great time to show Toledo that you support the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. So if you want more information or want to take part to purchase a shirt, then please check out our website, humanistwle.org. The second fundraising opportunity for our group, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, is that the American Humanists Association is having their national conference at the end of June, June 27th through the 29th. 9th, and I want to take the Glass City Humanist to the conference. Because I don’t charge people to listen to this, and I don’t have advertising.

[18:10] It’s basically done on the kindness of strangers, as it were. And so I am looking for sponsors to help out in paying some of the cost to go to the conference. Now I’m paying myself, paying the fees for myself to get into the conference, but I’m looking for sponsors to help, uh, lower the cost or, or cover some of the costs, uh, such as, uh, I want to get a rental car, uh, help pay for the hotel. And what I plan on doing is, uh, recording some of the speakers, interviewing, trying to interview some of them, some of the attendees, possibly even having maybe a table there. I don’t know. I don’t know all the details on that, but it’s going to be in Chicago. And so I am looking for sponsors. I do have sponsor levels going anywhere from $25 to $100, all the way up to $1,000. My goal is to raise $1,000.

[19:16] And if that is the case, then I will actually change the title of the show to include your name if you donate $1,000. So if you want to help out, like I said, any amount is great. I have a link on the podcast website, glasscityhumanist.show. This is a podcast.

[19:41] Music.

[19:48] One of the bills that was introduced so far in this term in the Ohio legislature was Senate Bill 34. And it was introduced by Senator Terry Johnson, whose district is directly east of Cincinnati along the Ohio River, Scioto County. He lives in Scioto County. The title, the short title of the bill that he introduced was Enact the Historical Educational Displays Act. And what this would do is it would require public schools to display certain historical documents. And what this bill does is it has a list of approved historical documents that a school may display. Let me read it. Let me read the list of the documents, and I’m sure the one that sticks out like a sore thumb will catch your eye like it did mine. The documents that are allowed include the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance, the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the United States Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the mottos of the United States and Ohio.

[21:18] So which one of those do you think sticks out like a sore thumb?

[21:24] Well, if you said the Ten Commandments, ding, ding, ding, ding, you win a prize. Basically, what this bill does is is a disguise in order to allow public schools or actually requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments without actually saying that they are to display the Ten Commandments. In previous court cases, including a Supreme Court case out of Kentucky back in the 1980s, posting the Ten Commandments by itself is generally unconstitutional. Because usually what happens is that the intent of posting it is a religious intent, and that is not allowed in a public school. Now, knowing how the Supreme Court and some of the federal courts are acting these days when it comes to church and state separation, I think that they could make a good case to try to get that part overturned, that precedent. I mean, they overturned Roe v. Wade. So who knows? But anyway, so basically it would require schools to post one of these documents. They wouldn’t be able to use tax money, and they would have to put it in a prominent place.

[22:50] It says, reasonably visible and accompanied by a description of its historical importance that serves an educational purpose.

[23:01] It says, this section does not require a board of education to spend its own funds to purchase displays or erect a monument or other marker. The board shall determine the amount of funds or donations required to comply with this. Oh, and it sounds pretty good because they also mentioned markers and monuments. There was a previously, previously there was an issue about Ten Commandment monuments. In that very area, that very vicinity, in Adams County, which is next door to Scioto County, which happens to still be in the district that Terry Johnson, who introduced this bill, is representing. So, you know, you would think that they would know the history. But let me, in case you don’t, back in 1997, a group of Christian ministers donated Ten Commandment monuments, like granite monuments, to the high schools in Manchester, Pebbles.

[24:06] Seaman, and West Union. And the ACLU of Ohio filed a lawsuit, and it wound its way through the courts, including two appeals to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which the school district lost. And that was in 2002.

[24:31] U.S. Magistrate Timothy Hogan said that the Ten Commandments violated the United States Constitution. For 10 months after the ruling, the monuments remained at the four high schools until a U.S. District court order issued on May 7th of that year threatened to hold the school board in contempt if they did not remove them by June the 9th. And so when the crew, the work crew, the monument crew came in to remove them, people protested, tried to prevent them from being removed, like physically tried to prevent them from being removed. And at the time, and this is dated June 9th, 2003 is when they’re finally being removed, 21 people were arrested for interfering in the removal.

[25:25] And the monuments were removed. The people that were arrested were later released without charges, as usually happens. And so you would think that somebody would tell the senator that introduced this bill that this is what happened last time. Now, for my secular friends and people listening to this, the environment for separation of church and state is completely different than it was in the early aughts, in the 2000s, 90s, 2000s. The lemon test that was used to find these monuments unconstitutional is essentially meaningless now. The recent U.S. Supreme Court cases pretty much chucked it to the curb.

[26:15] And now people have to prove that they’ve been injured by these monuments or being forced to pray to a religion that they don’t hold or things like that, rather than the optics of it being there, which still exists. The optics still exist, but that is the history that we don’t remember that we are doomed to repeat. But what I wanted to point out by bringing this up is that when sponsors introduce these bills, they go before the committee. In this case, it is the Senate Education Committee.

[27:00] And they have to speak to the committee and explain why they are introducing this bill. So Senator Terry Johnson, he’s in the 14th Senate District, is the sponsor. And he has this to say. This is his entire thing. It was two pages. He explained why he had to introduce this bill.

[27:27] Chairman Brenner, blah, blah, blah, the committee, blah, blah, blah. I thank you for the opportunity to provide sponsored testimony on Senate Bill 34. The legislation will require public schools to display one of a variety of historical documents in each classroom. The reason for this bill is to expose our students to the documents which have, in America, served as the backbone of our legal and moral traditions as a people. In my mind, it has been inexcusable that more focus has not been shown towards these historic texts within the academic arena in our state, denying the vital legal and moral essence that our children need to thrive as good American citizens. As it is written in the bill, the Board of Education of each school district shall select to display in each classroom at least one of the listed historical educational documents. This list includes the Mayfire Compact, Declaration of Independence, Northwest Ordinance, Mottos of the United States and State of Ohio Ten Commandments Magna Carta Bill of Rights U.S. Constitution and Articles of Confederation The Boards of Education shall ensure that each display is accompanied by a description explaining the historical importance of the document Simply put, this legislation intends to reintroduce disciplined historic principles, Those same principles upon which our founding fathers drew inspiration and put to writing back to the classroom.

[28:57] Importantly, this legislation ensures that no public funds will be required to be expended for the cost of these displays, although public funds may be used. The bill allows each local board of education to accept donated funds for the purchase of these displays or to accept donated displays themselves. It is essential that the displays are funded and promoted by the communities themselves, having a say in what gets displayed in their schools. Cost is a crucial factor in this legislation, and we do not want to put any undue burden on our public school districts. Realistically, many of these displays need not be any bigger than a simple 8.5 by 11 printout. More sizable documents such as the U.S. Constitution, Articles of Confederation, Northwest Ordinance, and Magna Carta may require more formatting as long as it remains reasonably visible. The Department of Education and Workforce shall post on its website materials to assist school districts with the formatting and educational information requirements. How lavish or detailed these displays become will be left up to the individual teacher’s discretion and creativity. Thank you again for your time and attention. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Yeah.

[30:22] Just have to love these Christian nationalists. And basically what it is, it’s just an end around to try to get the Ten Commandments posted. They’re assuming that the school’s going to pick the Ten Commandments or they’re going to encourage them to do it. But I do particularly take issue one with the displays need not be any bigger than a simple eight and a half by 11 printout. So do that. Print out something on your printer, if you have a printer at home or post it on a wall and see if you can see it.

[31:05] And in his idea that says in my mind it has been inexcusable that more focus has not been shown towards these historic texts within the academic arena in our state denying the vital legal and moral essence that our children need to thrive as good american citizens he doesn’t know that He can’t know that. He never asked. When this came out and I read what he said, I asked some people who have children in school. I also talked to a couple of school people that are on school boards.

[31:39] And many of those historical texts mentioned are discussed in school. In fact, they even have posters up of the Declaration of Independence, and they talk about the context and the historical significance. The Ten Commandments does not have a historical context in the founding of the United States. It just still happened that some of the founding fathers were Christians who subscribed to the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments was not written into our laws at all. And even if they had been, only two of them, such as do not steal and do not kill or do not murder, those are the only two that we see in our law today. The rest of the Ten Commandments either would be unconstitutional or just not practical. You know, there is no law currently. It’s not in the Constitution that we have to honor our father and mother.

[32:49] There’s no law about that. And this is just, again, just a cheap way to disguise putting up the Ten Commandments. And I can tell you, too, that just because you post the Ten Commandments in a public school will not guarantee that your children will thrive as good American citizens. We’ve had religion available to people for over 2,000 years. Christianity is an old religion. Islam is an old religion. You can go back and you can check all these major religions. Catholicism’s been around for a long time. And you still have bad people. You still have evil. Just because you force kids to pray does not make them good citizens. It will not protect them. They will not be good people just because of that. You know, you have to teach your kids how to be good people. So maybe religion plays a part in it. Maybe it doesn’t. That is up to the parents.

[33:54] And I just do not agree that the state and the government should be dictating this stuff. You know, they should give opportunities for teachers and schools to teach this stuff. And the other thing, too, where he was talking about the description explaining the historical importance of the document and that the state would come up with that. You know it’s not going to be accurate.

[34:26] It just won’t be. And it says here where Senator Johnson says, it is essential that the displays are funded and promoted by the communities themselves having a say in what gets displayed in their schools. People already have a say at what gets displayed in their schools. That’s why they elect a school board. That’s why parents go to parent teacher conferences. Like I said, when we were talking about the LifeWise bill this past year, where people are saying that the parents want to have rights to tell what their kids learn. And I said, you already do. All you have to do is call the superintendent, call the principal, and have a meeting with them. And they will be more than happy to go over exactly what you learned. The curriculum you can get from the state because a lot of these schools follow the state curriculum. You know what they teach. You know what books they use.

[35:27] You know, the school boards purchase these textbooks. So you know, if you go to school board meetings, what they’re doing. And those people are elected from the community. So this idea that somehow if we just post this poster of the Ten Commandments that our schools are going to be great again is horse crap.

[35:56] And this is what they waste their time on. They waste this time on this. There’s a bill that was introduced that would pay for lunch and breakfast for every student in public school in the state of Ohio. That gets short shrift when they waste time on crap like this about getting their religion back into school. How about if you be Christian and making sure that the kids have something to eat? All right. Well, I’m going to get off my soapbox. I just wanted to talk about Senate Bill 34, and I’ll keep you updated on what happens with this bill.

[36:35] Thank you for listening. For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. Sholee can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Glass City Jam, composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time.