The Real Cost of Eggs

Egg prices are out of sight! Not only are they expensive, sometimes they are hard to find. What’s going on? Newscasts tell us there are several reasons for the increase in egg costs—among them are increased grain feed prices but the most problematic is the highly contagious avian flu.

About 44 million egg-laying hens died in the United States as a result of avian flu last year or slightly more than one in 10 hens from the pre-outbreak population. Outbreaks occur because poultry are housed on huge factory farms in crowded filthy conditions. It can take months after an outbreak for farmers’ egg output to return to previous levels. In addition to clearing infected flocks, they have to clean the facilities, bring in new hens and wait for them to grow and lay eggs.

Americans eat a lot of eggs. They consumed an average of 278 per person last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Someone ate more than the average because no one in my household eats eggs—not for 10 years—not a single egg! Why does that matter?

We’ve learned on our plant-based journey that we don’t need eggs to be healthy, in fact eggs contribute to human disease. According to The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, eggs dramatically increase risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. In addition avian flu is highly contagious and deadly among humans as well as other animals.

The human cost of disease risk from egg consumption is mind boggling, but the environmental costs are even more so—poultry waste is devastating to water, land and air, to wells, rivers and oceans. The cost is astronomical!

Hopefully, acknowledgment of the real cost of eggs will lead us to find alternatives that contribute to human, animal and planetary health not our demise.