Egg prices are ruffling feathers in Georgia. What is causing the increase?

At a time when everything feels more expensive, for many consumers egg prices are where they've drawn the line.

In the dairy and egg aisle of the grocery store, shoppers joke with one another that buying two dozen eggs is the luxury of royalty, or share photos online setting the price of a carton of eggs to Joe Exotic of Tiger King fame declaring, "I will never financially recover from this."

A frittata? In this economy?

According to Consumer Price Index data, the average price for a dozen large Grade A eggs in December reached about $4.25. Overall, from December 2021 to 2022, the prices for meats, poultry, fish and eggs rose by 7.7%.

Background:Georgia bird and poultry experts work to prevent spread of deadly avian flu

More bird news:Coastal Georgia shores up beach conservation for shorebirds impacted by climate change

Unexpected factors cook up a big poultry problem

While it's easy to blame inflation, egg prices are a syndrome of a lot of different forces according to Benjamin Campbell, an associate professor and University of Georgia Agricultural Extension economist in the university's Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. He said the cause of the prices is a mixture of general strains in the economy as well as challenges particular to the chicken industry.

Last April was the beginning of the nation's big poultry problem. Highly pathogenic avian influenza, a deadly flu that has swept chickens and other birds throughout the country, has knocked out a hefty number of chickens at commercial facilities throughout the country. Precautions and losses from the flu have also driven up prices for equipment and other expenditures on the producer side of the egg industry.

"Even if we say today, we knocked the last case out for this year, it'll come back like the cold and flu cycle back over time," Campbell said. "It's still going to take a little bit of time to get new birds in the system to produce eggs."

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, since the start of the outbreak, 745 flocks have tested positive for avian influenza, 312 of which were commercial flocks, affecting over 58.2 million birds. None of those have been in Georgia, a state where only a handful of wild birds have tested positive.

This isn't the first instance that an avian flu has hit prices at the supermarkets. According to Campbell, in 2015 the U.S. had an avian influenza outbreak, but the prices didn't go up as much, most likely because it was not combined with the economic hardships of COVID-19 and inflation, plus increased demand during the holiday season that is just tapering off.

International disruptions also have a hand in scrambling the egg market. Fertilizer is essential to growing the feed for chickens, and Campbell said the conflict in Ukraine and Russia has "wholeheartedly" disrupted the fertilizer market throughout the world, driving production prices up for egg producers. Prices for everything else, from parts and machinery, were also impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and are still having lingering fiscal consequences for the industry.

Even buying locally doesn't avoid the fact that feed and equipment prices have hit the owners of backyard chicken coops, Campbell said.

And even for people who don't eat eggs, there is no escaping the conundrum, according to Campbell. Prices in other shelves of the grocery store could be impacted by consumers opting for other products in place of the pricier eggs.

Top chicken-producing state doesn't translate to egg prices

Despite being called the Peach State, Georgia's big industry is chickens. According to Mike Giles, president of the Georgia Poultry Federation — a nonprofit that represents the poultry industry at the legislative and regulatory level — the state is No. 1 in the country for broiler chickens. Broiler chickens are the kind you buy for meat in the poultry section of the grocery store. And while the state isn't the top producer of eggs, it's still in the top 10 nationwide.

Currently, Iowa is the leading producer with about 60 million egg-laying hens, Giles said. It's joined in those top rankings by other producers up north such as Indiana and Ohio. Georgia boasts about one-tenth of Iowa's 60 million egg-laying hens.

He isn't sure why Georgia is much more productive in broiler chickens than eggs. One reason he said egg producers might be located out in the Midwest is that they are much closer to where the grains for chicken feed are produced, greatly cutting down on a big cost for operation.

Right now, it can be hard to look sunny-side up. Giles cannot, nor can anyone, predict exactly when the prices for eggs will fall and he will stop receiving text messages from loved ones asking what's the deal with egg prices. But for the meantime, he said that eggs are still a good value protein source. Even at $6 a dozen, Giles said those $6 gets a person six to eight servings of protein for $1 a piece.