This Egg Company Stock Is Surging Along With the Price of Eggs
I recently cracked open some eggs and made a blueberry omelet. It was delicious, quick to prepare, and, arguably, quite nutritious. What's not to like (assuming you're not a vegan)?
"The rising cost of eggs," you might be thinking. Indeed, the retail price for a dozen eggs rose an average of 11.2% across the country between March 2021 and March 2022, according to the government's most recent Consumer Price Index release, and it seems likely the April release will show a much larger annual increase. Food prices overall were up by 8.8% over that period.
Eggs have been subject to the same inflationary pressures affecting most grocery items -- namely, pandemic-driven global supply chain issues. They've also recently risen in price for another reason: the worst U.S. outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza -- aka, "bird flu" -- since 2015. The current outbreak, which was first detected in February on a farm in Indiana, has been rapidly spreading in chicken and turkey flocks across the country. And when the illness is detected in a farm's flock, that entire flock is culled. As of April 6, this bird flu outbreak and the measures taken to contain it had decreased the country's table egg-layer flock by about 5%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's mid-April update. That percentage is poised to rise, perhaps sharply.
Source Fool.com
