One of the first observable impacts of the new Trump administration is the administration’s attack on public information. Agency communications are gagged, federal workers are encouraged to snitch on each other regarding DEI rollbacks, investigations are sealed, and we are told that somehow, Pete Hegseth is qualified to run the Department of Defense. Yet, nowhere can this onslaught on public information be better seen than in the price of eggs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps track of prices and charts inflation, noted a 3.2% average increase in the price of eggs in December of 2024. The numbers for this month aren’t out yet, but to be slapped in the face by price tags for eggs reaching up to $17 per dozen in Brooklyn boggles the mind.
According to Representative Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, eggs in Detroit cost $10 a dozen. Phone research done by People’s World in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Birmingham markets yielded prices that didn’t dip below $5 for a dozen for plain white large eggs. The year over year increase for eggs is now at 37%, with prices expected to skyrocket a further 20% in the first quarter of 2025.
The Trump-Vance campaign made a lot of noise about inflation, and analysts – quick to gloss over issues like xenophobia, Gaza, misogyny, and racism – have long insisted that the Harris-Walz campaign lost the 2024 election because of cost-of-living issues, first among them inflation. It was the Biden administration’s failure to bring down prices, these analysts insist, including the cost of eggs, that cost his Vice President the election.
Fallen silent on cost of living
Now that their administration has been secured, both Trump and Vance have fallen silent on the cost of living. Vice President Vance admitted to CBS on Saturday night that, despite it being a major campaign issue, “it’s going to take a bit of time” for prices to come down. In December, Trump told reporters that, as to the price of food, “it’s hard to bring [prices] down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
Yet, with Arabica coffee prices jumping in the wake of Trump’s threats of tariffs against Colombia, it seems as though that’s not the only self-inflicted cost increase by the administration. Despite eggs climbing over the past year, prices seem to have exploded under the new Trump administration.
Sharing photos of eye-watering egg prices from a local supermarket in Brooklyn, Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood told People’s World that it was “funny how much the Trumpers made out of the price of eggs. Now they can’t talk about it because it’s all about bird flu.”
Indeed, new federal guidance directs agencies to do just that – not talk about it. As part of Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, acting Health and Human Services secretary Dr. Dorothy Fink has ordered an immediate stop on all public health communication from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration “until it has been reviewed and approved by a Presidential appointee.” It’s a repeat of the absurd attempt Trump made in his first administration to curb the pandemic by simply reducing the amount of testing.
Speaking with People’s World, Dr. David Anderson of Texas A&M’s Department of Agricultural Economics cut straight to the chase. “Eggs have certainly skyrocketed in price. The biggest problem is the impact of HPAI — High Pathogenic Avian Influenza. That has cut our number of egg laying hens and egg supplies. For the most part, we still have eggs on the shelves, although there were not many at my local store this weekend.”
HPAI, presenting generally as its H5N1 strain, is highly transmissible and extremely deadly. One infection can quickly spread, wiping out whole farms within the span of just days. In contrast to the 2014-2015 Avian Flu outbreak, where 50 million birds were destroyed to “stamp out” the disease, in the past two years, more than 137 million birds in the United States have been culled to prevent its spread, devastating small-scale farmers.
Despite this wave of death and waste—culled birds are not put to market—more than 30 million birds have become infected with HPAI in the past month, with a new strain, H5N9, emerging in an outbreak announced by the World Organization for Animal Health just this weekend. Such an approach is not effective.
What about vaccines? China, Mexico, Guatemala, and France currently vaccinate birds to prevent widespread HPAI infections. Yet, big farming stands in the way of a vaccination campaign here in the United States.
“The National Chicken Council does not support the use of a vaccine for [bird flu] for a variety of reasons – the primary one being trade,” Tom Super of the National Chicken Council told CNN in 2023. A number of bilateral trade agreements between the United States and other markets prohibits the export of vaccinated chickens.
With prices climbing and shortages becoming more common on supermarket shelves, experts like Dr. Anderson don’t see a short-term solution forthcoming. “Its roughly 25 weeks to get the pullet [a young hen] to mature size to start laying eggs,” he told People’s World. “ I think it’s really a waiting game… I think the government could do some things to help work against HPAI like fund research on vaccinations, [and] build a supply of vaccinations for future use.”
Additionally, with Trump’s gag order on federal health agencies, consumers face a greater threat than the price of eggs. While the lack of public health notice may not affect your grocery bill as much as supply issues and greedy businesses engaged in price gouging, “if [HPAI] were to mutate into a virulent form that was really bad for people and spread easily, the lack of communication would hamper the information flow to people and doctors to allow us to respond faster,” warned Dr. Anderson. “So far, most all occurrences in people have been mild. We better hope and pray it stays that way.”
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