Worry: That’s how many people would describe the current egg shortage.
From the start of the year, the spread of the bird flu has come to the attention of many. In grocery stores, it isn’t uncommon today to see egg cartons are out of stock, and have been priced unusually high.
The bird flu influences the economy by affecting other common goods, the stock up on eggs, and the threats of an epidemic. With a common ingredient like eggs becoming harder to purchase, it starts to also impact the foods that depend on eggs. Countless amounts of foods people make commonly require 1-3 eggs in the recipe.
“Considering that eggs are used in a variety of baked goods, I don’t think it is unreasonable to see products like cakes, mayo, salad dressings, etc. to have their prices increase by a noticeable percentage,” said Agriculture teacher, Tyler Olinske. “This, along with inflation that may be heating up, will impact everybody.”
As eggs becoming harder to get, this can greatly affect people who work in food sciences, to regular citizens who are financially dependent on a cheap, easy meal.
With eggs becoming more of an uncommon dairy item, many people have resorted to stocking up. Stocking items which are becoming limited is a common thing, however, can also add to the problem of the shortage.
“Whenever there is a shortage of anything, people try to ‘stock up.’ This only compounds the issue.,” Natalie Hoffman, the transportation director of NACS, who owns a chicken farm with her husband. “If everyone just buys what they need, it would help everyone in the long run.”
Many grocery stores at the moment have quite a limited amount of cartons they can offer, instead of buying a large amount of eggs, it could just be better to buy the exact amount you need, this will help stretch out the cartons we have at the moment and keep them lasting longer.
With the bird flu spreading rapidly, some people are concerned about an epidemic on the way. Within a couple of months, an exceptional amount of chickens have been killed to stop the spread of the disease.
“My hope is that we are catching it soon enough that it doesn’t become an epidemic,” said freshman Eva Doucette. “But, I feel like we learned enough, and it’s being highly monitored in order to avoid risking a situation like covid.”
As of February 18 , there have been many reports of other mammals getting infected. However, it is being dealt with very seriously, and some improvements are to me made in the next couple of months.
With how the bird flu is currently spreading, many people infer it could take up to 6 months to a year to start fixing the issue of the shortage. For now, people can hope the strain of the bird flu will become less aggressive over time, and less worrisome.
