Eggs Selling Out and Prices Surging to Over $12/Dozen
Avian flu has wiped out about 10 percent of the U.S. egg-laying hen population. As the spread of the disease accelerates so do local egg shortages and price hikes.
| 03 Feb 2025 | 01:20
A shopper named Ginny at Trader Joe’s on Jan. 29 was picking up two cartons of eggs. She said on earlier visits the shelves were devoid of the organic eggs she buys. (
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There were eggs available at a D’Agostino’s-if customers wanted to fork over $12.39/dozen. The lowest priced eggs, at $3.49/dozen were down to a single container. A cashier said the store on First Ave. had sold out the day before when the priced eggs were going for “only” $10 a dozen. (
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Shoppers are encountering either empty stores shelves, or eggs that have soared to $12 a dozen, or stores that are adding a $2-per-carton surcharge as the Avian flu spreads rapidly, forcing entire flocks of hens to be euthanized.
At Trader Joe’s on East 14th Street, a shopper named Ginny was picking up two cartons of eggs. She said she had stopped by a week earlier, and a day earlier, and found the shelves bare. When she returned on Jan. 29, she said her husband told her there was a two-carton limit. “I always buy organic,” she said. “It’s the best.”
Trader Joe’s seemed to be holdings its everyday low prices. Some of the lowest priced $3.49/dozen were still available when we visited on Jan. 29, but they were selling fast.
There was no sign saying there was a two-carton limit on the fast-diminishing supply of eggs that day. When Straus News checked with customer service, a rep named Brendan said, “We don’t have a two-carton limit, but if someone tried to buy a whole case, we’d limit it.”
Whether the two-carton limit was real or transitory or just an urban legend, we don’t know. An email to Trader Joe’s HQ was not returned by presstime.
On the social media site Next Door one user was sure there was a two-carton limit and was upset when she spied a shopper who had found a way around the limit: She said a grandmother had two cartons, but she had two of her young grandchildren with her and they each also had two cartons. “They should make it two cartons per family,” she wrote.
One shopper told us he discovered his neighborhood Trader Joe’s was out and went to a supermarket where he found eggs—but at $10 a dozen.
At a neighborhood Morton Williams, a fresh supply had landed on shelves on Feb. 3 and the chain was selling an 18-pack carton for $11.99.
Whole Foods was said to be imposing a three carton limit on its customers while keeping prices in the $4.99 range.
A short distance away from the East Village Trader Joe’s at a D’Agostino’s on First Avenue near 20th Street, shelves still had some eggs available when Straus News stopped by on Jan. 29 but the most expensive were going for $12 a dozen. But even with the high prices, the eggs were selling out. A cashier told us, “We sold out yesterday. We had to get them from another store. The warehouse did not have any.”
John Catsimatidis, the CEO of Red Apple, which owns Gristede’s and D’Agostino’s, said, “They killed a zillion chickens. The prices are going up and down all the time.” He said it could be six months before the supplies and prices stabilize.
Other experts say they expect it could be considerably longer before the egg-laying hen population grows back to the 310 million mark, making it basically one chicken for every person in America.
The shortages are due to entire flocks of egg-laying hens being slaughtered to try to stop the spread of the bird flu. The disease was initially centered in California, but it went bicoastal recently and forced Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue, on the eastern end of Long Island, to put down its entire 100,000-bird flock. Long Island duck was once a delicacy, but Crescent was the last remaining duck farm on the island. And it looks like the owner is not going to start over any time soon. A WARN notice posted with the Department of Labor said all 45 employees were being laid off. The reason stated: “natural disaster.”