Weaverville – As hens are being euthanized en masse after being exposed to bird flu, local grocers attribute bare shelves to “panic buying” more than a shortage of egg-layers.
Currently, health officials are not inclined to create a public scare over bird flu. They maintain that H5N1 cannot be caught by humans from birds. Rather, it is spread from bird droppings that are picked up by other birds. Regardless, millions of cases of bird flu have now been confirmed and are starting to show up in cattle and possibly dairy farm cats.
Bird flu first became a thing in 2022. At that time, members of the general public rolled their eyes as public health officials were telling them to wash their hands while singing Happy Birthday, sneeze into their elbows, and do other things that seemed over the top for something that seemed such a low risk. Since then, H5N1 casualties in egg-laying as well as meat birds have been racking up.
Bird flu is not the direct cause of these fatalities. Rather, because H5N1 is highly contagious, those who raise agricultural birds are required by authorities to kill their entire flocks should any bird in their flock test positive for the virus. To date, the death count for commercial poultry sacrificed to H5N1 in the United States is 50,432,700. More have been killed in Canada and Europe. This does not include tallies from backyard farms, wild flocks, or farmers of large flocks who did not release counts.
Fallow periods vary by state. In some, after killing an entire flock of thousands of birds, commercial farmers are further ordered to refrain from raising poultry on their property for 180 days.
On January 7, a case of H5N1. was confirmed at a commercial layers’ operation in Hyde County, North Carolina. It did not bode well for the flock of 2,771,300 birds. Prior to that, the last mass killing of potentially contaminated commercial birds in the state was in February 2024. Elsewhere, many owners of large commercial poultry outfits have not divulged the number of birds that they had to kill.
While reports of the first human death attributed to bird flu recently emerged on January 6, the greatest statistical threat the virus has to humans at this point is the scarcity of eggs on grocers’ shelves. Stores like Whole Foods have for some time had signs on their empty or nearly empty shelves, apologizing to customers for supply chain issues. Whole Foods is among many grocers who have decided to require all eggs that they sell to be raised cage-free.
Because cage-free chickens range over wider swaths of turf, the probability of them stepping in or flapping in contaminated soil is increased. Subsequently, these chickens have suffered a disproportionate share of positive tests for the virus.
While Publix is frequently restocking its egg shelves, the shortage is less noticeable at Ingles Markets. A couple of managers explained that eggs were selling out as fast as they could stock them, but supplies were in good order. One of them described the situation as “panic buying” rather than a shortage. The Fresh Market is also experiencing shortages and posting apology signs.
A few egg restaurants were contacted before everything shut down for the snow. Another Broken Egg in Biltmore Park Town Square said they were experiencing no shortages. The Moose Café, which serves generous portions of farm-to-table right by the WNC Farmers’ Market, also reported no shortages.
Nobody interviewed for this article knew whether or not their stores had policies forbidding the purchase of eggs laid by caged hens. North Carolina is not one of the 10 states with cage-free mandates.
Scarcity is normally accompanied by an increase in prices, but the average shopper is not seeing expensive eggs. Instead, they go to the store only to find a few cartons of normally high-priced exotic eggs that they don’t care to take home.
This is because grocers keep the prices of eggs and milk down. Low prices on staples work well as bait to draw customers into stores, where grocers hope they will end up filling a grocery cart. They have to be careful with their pricing, though, because if items are priced too low, items will fly off the shelf, and consumers have been known to abandon grocery carts when they cannot find the staples they need.