SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Eggs are a sizzling commodity at Bay Space grocery shops proper now. You’ll have observed empty cabinets whenever you’re out doing all your procuring.
KRON4 spoke with farmers and trade specialists about what’s inflicting the obvious scarcity.
Hen flu has been wreaking havoc on poultry farms and Northern California isn’t any exception. If eggs are nonetheless on the cabinets at your native grocery retailer, customers will doubtless discover greater costs.
Empty cabinets within the egg part have change into a standard sight within the grocery retailer. On Tuesday, an indication that mentioned “Chickens on Strike” was put up at a Dealer Joe’s in San Jose.
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Cabinets had been re-stolked at a Safeway in San Francisco Wednesday, however there was nonetheless a discover to customers limiting them to 2 egg merchandise every, as a result of a restricted egg provide.
Final winter, Dawn Farms in Petaluma needed to euthanize greater than 80,000 chickens due to hen flu. This week, the homeowners confirmed to KRON4 that the flu is again and inflicting the egg scarcity this 12 months.
“Getting really hard to find eggs at all,” mentioned Brittany Morse, assistant director of animal care on the nonprofit Wildcare, which lately despatched a bunch of useless birds to the California Division of Fish and Wildlife for testing.
“One hundred percent of them came back positive for bird flu and we just sent another group of cadavers in yesterday and that was three times as many bodies, so unfortunately we’re seeing the symptoms that we suspect would be bird flu,” Morse mentioned.
Morse mentioned the hen flu is often unfold from wild birds throughout their migration. The hen flu outbreak started in February 2022 and has led to the slaughter of greater than 111 million birds, principally egg-laying chickens.
If one case slips right into a farm, homeowners are left making a troublesome determination for even the healthiest birds.
“If they get one positive, they have to euthanize everybody because they have no idea how much it spread and it’s so aggressive that they have to assume every single bird they have could potentially have bird flu,” mentioned Morse.
The Meals Business Affiliation put out a nationwide report right this moment saying that the hen flu has induced egg costs to extend 8.2%.
