Originally published at: The price of eggs and natural gas is spiking in California | Boing Boing
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Today I bought 18 eggs at $6.36 People with gas ask me about the cost of propane thinking they might switch over. But at $3.95 a gallon plus the cost to convert everything they change their mind.
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The cheapest option in my WA state supermarket is about $3.50 for a dozen. (Which is a rough doubling of the price.) The local Costco has stopped selling them altogether, at least for the moment.
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I just bought a dozen eggs for $2.95 about 2 days ago, at Whole Foods in LA. I’m not sure where you guys are buying such expensive eggs…? Are you buying them at Erewhon or something?! 
If you don’t believe me I have the receipt to prove it.
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A dozen seem to be just under 7 bucks in Silver Lake…
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/pete-and-gerrys-organic-large-eggs-12-eggs-b00f0znk8e
and these seem to be cheaper, but still not $3:
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/vegafed-grade-a-large-eggs-b006d2y5dw
maybe yours were onsale, but even here where I live (in GA) good quality organic or free range eggs are way up (around $7).
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I’d check the expiration date.
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"The increase is due to a bird flu outbreak that killed over 10% of egg-laying hens. "
So a price increase of 11% would have fixed that. But no, all the extra cost is going into someone’s pocket.
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Well there’s your problem. How much for eggs at a regular grocery store?
But yes, eggs are a little high because of the Avian Flu. Have been for awhile as farms sometimes have to kill a bunch of birds to stop the spread. 
Still, it feels like these media stories love to pump up the prices, or lead the headline with the highest prices in the nation, when it is much lower elsewhere.
So I downloaded the USDA PDF, and sure enough it has CA eggs as cage free at $7.37. But the national average is $2.58 for cage free brown. So, uh, are there other things going on in CA? Do they have extra taxes? Higher cost of living so everything is more? Laws about eggs that make them cost more? Local areas hit harder?
Here is the PDF if anyone wants to look.
Gas bill sucks. Sorry. Hopefully the pipe line is back up soon?
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I bought a dozen eggs at Smart & Final Tijuana a couple of days ago for $2.50 USD, and don’t really use much gas because not many homes have central heating here. Sure, folks can hate on TJ for so many inconveniences, but at least it doesn’t hurt so bad in the wallet for things that can be produced here instead of being imported (one example being clumping kitty litter).
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Man, that really sucks, I feel for you folks. We buy our eggs from a local farm which delivers them to our door, so we pay a premium over store bought, but it’s still only $5 a dozen or thereabouts.
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Well, I got my eggs at a kroger, not a whole foods. I’ll check the Farmer’s Market today, to see what they are going for there… Even the cost of regular eggs were way up at my local kroger though.
The person I replied to got them at a whole foods in LA somewhere.
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My wife owns a bake shop and tracks the price of eggs very closely. In VA over the last 18 mos or so a case (5 doz) has gone from about $8 to $30. This has been going on since prior to the latest bird flu outbreak, and seems to be multifactorial. We have friends in the poultry business who assure us that the farmers are not seeing this increase. Gee, I wonder where that extra dough is going?
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You should! In KY, with your mild climate, the biggest thing will be keeping predators at bay. (Here in Maine it was a pain in the winter, needed heated waterers and all that.) Bonus: they seemed to really help keep the tick population down when we had them.
Well, your wife’s the one with the bake shop…
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One of the things we hope for when we move to New England again this summer is enough room for chickens, both for the eggs AND the tick reduction. Good info though on needing heated waterers. I can’t remember how my mom and dad kept their chickens watered in the middle of winter, that was so long ago.
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Once we move to the new place, the first two things on my list are chickens and solar power. Not necessarily in that order.
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But what about solar powered chickens?
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The local laws aren’t the main part of the story but since you ask, yes they are a small factor.
Proposition 12 bans eggs from caged hens in California, and was just fully implemented in the state last January. So our options for importing more eggs from out-of-state are limited.
Regarding the natural gas prices, it’s not a big deal for my family (we typically use less than 10 therms per month) but I imagine that it really sucks for people and municipalities who tried to do the right thing for the environment when purchasing CNG-fueled vehicles. They’re probably paying more right now than most of us did to fuel gasoline powered vehicles at the height of the price spikes last year.
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Too bad this isn’t a pickled eggs and beer situation. Then we’d know exactly what the reason for the spike in natural gas was about.
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They sorta are… they get their energy from feed, which gets it from he sun…
More solar options available if you’re a Robot Chicken (bawk bawk)
So if an out of state farm is also cage free, can it be imported? Or do they have to have some sort of compliance certificate allowing it? (CAs rules on what is “cage free” may not match other states.)
I guess this does hamper the supply chain, but there are a lot of cage free eggs in the US. I see them at my store and they usually aren’t priced much higher.
Yeah, like I said it’s not the main part of this story, probably just one of the minor factors. I voted for prop 12 knowing that that it might make egg prices slightly higher but those birds deserve at least this very minimal standard for humane living conditions that many of them weren’t getting.
And yes, they can still imported from other states as long as they meet the requirements.
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