A bird flu running through poultry flocks in the U.S. is driving up the price of chicken and eggs at the grocery store, just ahead of both Passover and Easter.
The price of store-bought eggs has jumped some 53% according to the USDA, and chicken has nearly doubled. However, some regionalvendors haven't been impacted yet.
“Our egg supplier is vertically integrated," says Matt Shatto, vice president of Shatto Milk Company in Osborn, MO, "so we really don’t have the worries that some of the national and international providers that are shipping to grocery stores and other things are dealing with."
A H5N1 bird flu virus have been found in wild birds, as well as commercial and backyard poultry in 24 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Standard practice is to cull, or kill off, affected flocks.
Farmers nationwide have had to kill about 22 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens but also including 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys.
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As the nation's leading egg producer, Iowa accounts for many of those cases, with operations having to kill about 13 million chickens and 305,000 turkeys since the outbreaks began in January. Iowa had 46 million chickens on farms in February, and raises about 11.7 million turkeys annually.
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