Virtue signaling may be in part to blame for the sky-high price of eggs across the US, with cartons fetching as much as $12 to $15 a dozen in pricey states like California and New York.
The current bird flu pandemic has seen nearly 150 million egg-laying hens culled in the US, driving prices through the roof.
Liberal California has been one of the hardest hit, where a 2018 law mandated that all eggs produced and sold in the nation’s most populous state be cage-free by 2022 — coincidentally, the same year the current H5N1 outbreak began.
The Golden State’s cage-free law is typical of liberalism’s low-information, feel-good priorities that often come with devastating consequences. For starters, California had been a top egg-producer, but such regulations forced farmers to flee the state and egg production has plummeted.
That didn’t stop the mandate from having a ripple effect across the entire industry, with eight other states following suit, and today 40% of eggs sold in the US are cage-free, up from just 5% in 2010.
Until the 2000s, most US chicken farmers had never heard of avian flu. In fact, the previous century saw only three major pandemics.
Since 2004 there have been between five and 15 outbreaks (depending on how they’re defined) with the current one by far the deadliest.
And a third of the top 10 worst-hit states mandate cage-free facilities.
In fact, of the 13.6 million egg-laying hens that were depopulated in late 2023, California alone accounted for 30% of the loss, despite producing only an estimated 4% of the nation’s eggs
Turns out, social distancing is something governments only enforce on humans, not livestock. But, like humans, socializing doesn’t necessarily mean a biohazard time-bomb for birds.
Avian flu is spread by wild, migratory birds and enters a facility in any number of ways — from duck poop on boots to hitching a ride on rats.
While a 2023 USDA analysis found no significant correlation between housing type and initial infection, it’s common sense that pathogens would spread faster in cage-free facilities.
Critics also say such facilities are harder to clean; this may contribute to the spread — a January 2025 USDA report suggests most commercial flock infections are tied to farm-to-farm transmission.
The fact remains, cage-free laws don’t help the situation. Before this year, cage-free eggs — rapidly becoming the industry standard thanks to California’s market influence and buyers like Walmart and McDonald’s pledging to go cage-free — cost between 20% and 130% more at grocery stores.
The label simply makes shoppers, and voters, feel better — conjuring images of flocks grazing in idyllic, sun-drenched pastures. But that’s hardly the case.
Many farmers and advocates argue that cage-free conditions — where birds are packed indoors without bars — are worse for bird health and happiness than standard facilities.
“They’re more stressed in a cage-free environment because of the whole pecking order issue. There’s increased cannibalism,” chicken farmer Frank Hilliker of Hilliker’s Ranch Fresh Eggs in Lakeside, Calif., told the Post.
Agriculture advocate and farmer Stephanie Nash, of Chapel Hill, Tenn., sees globalization, silly laws like cage-free mandates and central planning from detached activists and bureaucrats as key causes of the stratospheric rise in avian pandemics.
She notes there’s little incentive for the elites to chip in, or find solutions, with people like Bill Gates preoccupied by trendy passions like the fake-meat movement.
Like many farmers, Nash is hopeful that Trump’s culling of the swamp will result in fewer pandemics. Farmers are equally optimistic about Trump’s agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, who has an extensive farming background stretching back to childhood.
Compare that to her predecessor under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, who never worked on a farm and grew up in Pittsburgh.
“This whole thing started in the West,” Nash told The Post. “One thing Europe has figured out is they do eat by region. I think that’s something the US should be getting back to. It’s putting money into rural communities, into your schools, back into your community. It’s very important to have food security.”
If COVID taught us anything, it’s that the government will always make a crisis worse as we’re implored to trust eyrie experts.
Parents knew what was best for their children, not the teachers’ union. Patients knew better than their doctors if they needed the jab.
When it comes to the well-being of our feathered friends, it’s time to put trust back in our farmers and away from cage-free ideologues.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
