Winco Egg-Price Ripoff!!!!

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Why does a California outbreak change prices all the way to SC and Florida?
Our egg prices for the white shell has jumped as well. But got a dozen of local free range brown shell for about the normal price. Don't remember if I posted earlier but it took years for my wife to eat brown shelled eggs.
 
Why does a California outbreak change prices all the way to SC and Florida?
Our egg prices for the white shell has jumped as well. But got a dozen of local free range brown shell for about the normal price. Don't remember if I posted earlier but it took years for my wife to eat brown shelled eggs.
I think it's more widespread than that... several outbreaks here in Iowa. I'm sure more than that the way it spreads

Ryan
 
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I think it's more widespread than that... several outbreaks here in Iowa. I'm sure more than that the way it spreads

Ryan
The Ohio Department of Agriculture reported 2,052,773 birds have been “depopulated” in the Miami Valley because of H5N1 since Jan. 9. The affected birds were located in Darke and Mercer counties, and included turkeys and potentially others.
 
The number of [Chicken Egg Production in the US] businesses has declined -8.7% per year on average over the five years between 2018 and 2023. The biggest egg producer, Cal-Maine, now controls over 20% of the entire market. Most damningly, Cal-Maine’s net profit in 2023 was about $758 million — 471 percent higher than the year prior, according to its annual financial report. Most of this fortune was made through hoisting up prices; the number of eggs sold, measured in dozens, rose only 5.9 percent.

Concentration in the market inspires the biggest producers to cut corners. Three-quarters of the country’s hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens are crammed into just 347 factory farms, making outbreaks worse. They also select for genetically-similar (read: most prolific) egg-layers, reducing genetic diversity and, therefore, resistance to widespread epidemics.

It's corporate greed.
 
Fact: In 2023, the United States had over 382 million laying hens. This was a 1% increase from the previous year.

Fact: More than 20 million egg-laying chickens in the U.S. died last quarter (2024) because of bird flu.

Fact: Of 35 million egg-laying hens killed by the virus last year (2024), nearly half contracted the virus in the last 3 months.

Question: If less than 10% of the egg laying hens were destroyed, why have prices soared 300‐500% in most markets?

Question: Why have "white-shelled" egg prices soared 300-500% when brown-shelled egg prices are 1/3rd the price FROM THE SAME FRIGGIN' supplier?

Corporate friggin' greed.

Brown-shelled eggs taste exactly the same as white-shelled eggs.

Crack on!

Ray
 
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Brown-shelled eggs taste exactly the same as white-shelled eggs.
I can see why people like the various colored(blue, green, etc) eggs, but why do folks prefer brown over white shelled? I never understood that one.

Chris
 
I can see why people like the various colored(blue, green, etc) eggs, but why do folks prefer brown over white shelled? I never understood that one.

Chris
Marketing.

The brown-shell, egg-laying hens are raised EXACTLY like the hens that produce white-shelled eggs. Brown-shelled eggs are marketed as more healthy and natural.

The only difference I've been able to find concerning nutritional differences has to do with pasture-raised hens/eggs vs cage/cage-free hens/eggs. The pasture-raised vs cage/cage-free are basically the poultry version of grass-fed beef vs stockyard-raised beef. Egg shell color doesn't matter. How they are raised and fed is what matters for nutritional value.

Americans prefer white-shelled eggs because that's been most commonly available.

Egg demand has increased over the last two decades, but so has production. The current price increase with only an 8% reduction in output is not justified.

Ray
 
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Americans prefer white-shelled eggs because that's been most commonly available.
Ray up my way I think this is reversed. It seems brown shelled eggs are preferred. White shelled are always cheaper and better stocked than brown shelled.

Chris
 
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Ray up my way I think this is reversed. It seems brown shelled eggs are preferred. White shelled are always cheaper and better stocked than brown shelled.

Chris
interesting. at the store white eggs are cheaper here. If I was to want colored eggs a bunch of neighbors up here sell fresh eggs for $6 a dozen, they are pretty good and fresh, but We also feed them to our dogs and the cost ran up too high too fast.
 
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I rarely watch the national news as I get tired of their illusionist distraction agenda.
Thanks Ray noboundaries noboundaries for the facts.
Local Florida news (that I watch) hasn't reported anything on the bird flu. Their current focus is on the human flu which normally gets higher this season for the cruise flu.
Never paid much attention to shell color. Growing up we always had white shell farm eggs with a nice dark yolk. Fast forward many years of getting bland yolks. Introduced my wife to farm eggs and brown shells. I loved the deep yolk, but she being an influenced city girl that white means clean and sanitary (carries thru to many other products such as White Humor) and couldn't get past the brown shell. She got past it and now prefers unwashed eggs when we get farm raised.
Won't get them here in FL as our first purchase included a balut.
Balut is a 10-14 day incubated chicken or duck embryo
 
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The bird flu is one part and it is still spreading an outbreak was reported on a north Ga producer in the last week or two the first for the area. The areas the last 3 hurricanes hit was an area with a lot of chicken farms and many were total losses. I haven't seen any recent numbers about reduction of the total laying hens but would suspect it to be down.
We have hens that lay a wide array of colors. There are several varieties that lay white eggs. We have white legbars that lay a lot of eggs. Legbars come in a variety of types and egg colors.
 
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The bird flu is one part and it is still spreading an outbreak was reported on a north Ga producer in the last week or two the first for the area. The areas the last 3 hurricanes hit was an area with a lot of chicken farms and many were total losses. I haven't seen any recent numbers about reduction of the total laying hens but would suspect it to be down.
We have hens that lay a wide array of colors. There are several varieties that lay white eggs. We have white legbars that lay a lot of eggs. Legbars come in a variety of types and egg colors.
chicken.jpg


Yep. That was in Elbert county last week in northeast GA about an hour away from us. Chickens are a huge industry around here and everyone is worried. We live about 20 minutes away from Gainesville GA in a rural area and chicken growers are everywhere. Gainesville called it's city the chicken capitol of the world lol. They even have a statue with a chicken on top in the center of town in "Poultry Park". I've always heard chickens are the biggest ag business in the state.
From the local news:
The poultry industry in Georgia is about $30 billion of its economy.

Due to the detection of the bird flu in Georgia, all poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales (flea markets, auction markets) in the State of Georgia are suspended until further notice.

Officials said bird flu has been identified four times in backyard chickens in Georgia. Commercial flocks in 35 other states have reported bird flu since the nationwide outbreak began in 2022.
 
Growing up in the Seattle 'burbs in the 60's & 70's, white eggs were almost all I ever saw. Brown eggs were considered exotic. Colored chicken eggs (except on Easter) was something from some other part of the world. Of course, we had a Wonder Bread factory and a milk man delivery, too, so I guess I really grew up in a "white bread" world.
 
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My Son just told me some of the vendors are " contracted " . Which means they offer a bid to stock eggs on the shelf . That means if approved , bid accepted , they can not change the price .
Probably local brands , but might be worth checking into where you're at . That would mean looking at all the price tags . Not just the front and center store brand eggs .
 
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I think Forestry is still number one there but broilers, peanuts, chicken eggs, cotton and peaches all rank up there.
I'm real close to S GA and am there often. It's about the closest Home Depot, Tractor Supply, and Rural King stores around me. Tallahassee is about as close but a much better drive into GA

Chop a lot of the chicken farms do contract growing both for eggs and eating chickens with big chicken houses producing broilers.
We used to have two good sized chicken operations within 10 miles of us and both have closed.
 
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Brown-shelled eggs taste exactly the same as white-shelled eggs.

Ray
In the book "The Food Lab" by J Kenji Lopez-Alt, he does an experiment with home farm raised eggs vs. commercial store-bought eggs. Of course everybody thinks a farm egg tastes better than a commercial egg. He decided to do an experiment with several people. They consistently chose the farm eggs as tasting better until he decided to take the "visual" out of the equation and cooked the eggs scrambled with green food coloring. Nobody could taste the difference. It's mental.

I used to do work for folks around here that raised chickens and used to get free eggs of all colors. It was cool, but I never really tasted any difference from eggs from Walmart; but they were sure pretty...all kinds of colors. I also learned that you dont wash them until you are ready to eat them, so you have to get your head around leaving what looks like very unsanitary "stuff" on the shells and they will keep for literally weeks at room temperature on the counter in a bowl. Wash them and you remove that protective layer or film they are laid with and they will spoil faster.

Eggs at Walmart here in Central Virginia are running about $4.50 a dozen. Picked up a dozen on sale at Kroger for about $3.50 last week. We dont really eat a lot of eggs so this doesn't affect me that much. BUT...not that long ago eggs were less than $2 a dozen, so...

I'm a conspiracy theorist, so for me none of the "sickness" in any of the protien herds is "happenstance".
 
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