Why are eggs, egg product prices going up? Restaurant & farming expert weigh in

PHOENIX - Have you noticed the price of eggs lately? They’ve nearly doubled over the past year.

The production costs are impacting prices at the grocery store, bakery, and your favorite restaurant.

This isn’t about inflation or supply chain issues. It boils down to a pandemic of sorts among birds as the Avian, or Bird Flu, is killing millions of birds.

Greg left the grocery store with all his eggs in one basket. Then, might have had a little egg on his face when he read the receipt.

"Now that I’ve got the information, I’m going to have to think twice about this," he said.

The World Health Organization considers this the worst Bird Flu outbreak in history, killing an estimated 52 million birds in 46 states since February.

"If I’m a farmer and I have birds that have been diagnosed with the Avian Flu, I’m gonna pretty much going to have to shut that barn down. It kills the bird, so that’s the heartbreak about this," Julie Murphree with the Arizona Farm Bureau said.

To make an omelet, Quiché, or just about anything in a restaurant like Lux Central, you have to crack a few eggs. Try 15 to 30 dozen a day.

"The price is increasing all the way across. Everybody, little by little, is praising prices to keep up, and we’re no different, but we try to keep up with the quality as well, which I think balances it out," said Katy Callahan with Lux Central.

Greg’s a good egg, so he’ll check with his wife to see if more eggs are on the menu before prices start to eat into their nest egg.

"I’ll check with the boss back home and see what she wants to do," he said, jokingly.

As for the Bird Flu, it's cyclical and seasonal, just like the human flu, so there are hopes we are at or may be beyond the peak.

The last big outbreak was in 2014 when 50 million birds died.

Glenn Hickman of Hickman's Family Farms says their farms in Arizona are doing OK, but that others aren’t so lucky.

"We’ve been fairly lucky here in Arizona. We did lose an organic flock at our Colorado facility," Hickman said.

Although the price may be frustrating, Hickman says the eggs we do have are still great quality.

"The egg supply out there is very, very safe. There’s no transmission of Avian Flu to people or anything like that, so it’s just kind of a fluke that this happened. This happened about seven years ago and it seems like it’s come back with vengeance," Hickman said.