The culprit? Avian (Bird) Flu, more accurately referred to as the H5N2 virus, a highly contagious disease with a 100% fatality rate for the birds. The solution? Isolate, then kill those infected chickens which have not already died. Testing takes time, so entire flocks are "put down" (euthanized) to prevent the spread once it is found in a facility. When farmers who house 5 million chickens are hit, as some have been, it is a game changer from which they may never recover.

As of this week (June 28, 2015), almost 50 million chickens have been lost to American farmers, mainly in the midwest, with Minnesota and Iowa being hardest hit. In Iowa alone, 31.5 million birds have either died or been euthanized as a result of H5N2. In dollar costs, it has been estimated that to replace their birds will cost $191 million. However the true damage is closer to $957 million when you consider all of the other factors, such as the implementation of government regulated hazmat procedures, cleanup, disposal and rebuilding.

How the H5N2 virus began its current rampage remains a mystery to investigators. One popular theory is that since it has been found (rarely) in wild migrating birds like ducks and geese, then it must have been spread by wild birds coming into contact with domesticated poultry. What this theory cannot answer is how laying hens and broiler meat birds from "industrial (factory) farms", guarded fanatically against just such an occurrence could have caught a virus from wild migrating fowl. Redundant protocols have been in place for decades, creating laboratory-like hygienic conditions at all entry and exit points to the chicken laying houses, some of which house millions of birds in one location.

Often, workers must shower when entering or exiting, change clothes or use special shoes and boots while on the premises. Even at loading dock areas, special in-floor troughs with antiviral and antibacterial foam are walked upon when going in or out. Trucks which carry eggs from one facility may not be used at another one, to avoid cross contamination of chicken feces which might adhere to truck tires or fecal dust which might attach itself to wet undercarriages.

So how did H5N2 break out in such a closely guarded environment? That question may never be answered. That it has arrived is without a doubt, as evidenced by the price of eggs at the grocery store skyrocketing 80% higher, and meat producing companies such as Post Holdings and Hormel predicting a decline in sales. “With this highly infectious disease, there are just some points of entry that we hadn’t conceived of. We’re not even sure what those points of entry are,” Olson states.

Is the Handwriting on the Wall for Industrial Chicken Factories?

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota is watching this situation closely. Director Michael Osterholm says that the safety protocols which are in place at "industrial-scale" farming, where huge "layer operations" produce so much of our nations eggs are designed to protect the chickens from contamination. With this catastrophic failure to prevent and then contain, not just at one farm but at many in different states, the spotlight is now focussing on the practices which give rise to so many losses and affect the whole world in the process.

Challengers of "Factory Farms" Point to the Chicken Living Conditions as the Culprit

Critics insist that chickens which are confined indoors, whose fecal matter becomes airborne after it dries and is stirred up by chickens' natural "scratch and peck" instincts, breathe in the dust which attaches to lungs. This creates lesions and tumors on other organs so that the chickens must be injected or fed antibiotics to combat this inevitable effect. Closely confined hens and broilers which are pumped full of pharmaceuticals cannot develop an effective immune system, so when a virus like H5N2 comes along, they have no hope to fend off any attack.

Proponents of a more natural way of rearing egg layers and meat birds point out that upon hatching, baby chicks immediately start to scratch with their feet through the straw or sawdust of the brooder. They haven't been taught this behavior by a mother hen… it is instinctual. Chicks scratch, then back up and look down to see if there is anything to eat, preferably moving. Young chicks will chase moths, mosquitos, crickets and grasshoppers, gobbling them up as quickly as possible. Natural behaviors are stifled in a caged environment, or even in technically "cage-free" environments which still confine chickens inside factory houses. Their diet is not as robust as those chickens which roam outdoors around green pastures.

What is the Cost of a Dozen Eggs?

Strictly crunching the numbers as a guide to what the consumer is getting, then that would mean a store bought, industrial production egg contains only 1/7 of what a pastured egg contains. That would mean that a $2 per dozen factory produced dozen which is carried by 98% of the grocery stores in North America really costs the consumer $14.00 per dozen to obtain the same nutritional value of buying a single dozen "pastured eggs". In other words, you actually save money buying a $5 per dozen farmers market, pastured egg. Savings? $9.00

It seems that as far as horsepower goes, what's under the hood matters just as much with eggs as it does with cars.

"However," Joel says, "That's only half of the cost analysis. When you buy factory produced eggs at a grocery store, you are also buying higher amounts of bad things; things we try to minimize in our diet."

What things? Joel answers, "A factory produced egg contains 1/3 more cholesterol and 1/4 more saturated fats than a pastured egg."

Egg Prices Are Climbing Out of Sight Since the Crisis

Now that supermarket egg prices are ascending into the stratosphere, it might surprise you to learn that farmers who produce pastured poultry haven't really changed their pricing at all. Pastured eggs typically cost on average, $5 per dozen before the crisis and still cost the same now. Compared with the "$2-per-dozen-but-one-seventh-the-nutrition" cost of the grocery store egg, it WAS less than half the cost for the good food value you derived.

Since the crisis, with the average price of grocery store eggs reaching $3.50 per dozen, the cost difference becomes even more dramatic:

Grocery store (factory produced) eggs (with one seventh the food value) = $3.50 per dozen
Multiply that cost by how many dozen it would take to give you the same nutrition as a pastured egg: $24.50 per dozen

For those math junkies, that spells out a savings of: $24.50 - 5.00 = $19.50 per dozen !!

Let the Consumer Beware

If you buy your eggs at a local farmers' market from the farm which produces the eggs, ask them if their hens are confined, or allowed to roam the fields. Since eating greens, "critters" and getting plenty of exercise and sunshine make a healthier egg, you can ask very specific questions. Avoid falling for labeling gimmicks; things which sound similar: "Cage-free" chickens are still raised in factory houses. "Organic" fed chickens are still raised in factory houses. Even "free-range" labels can refer to giving factory housed chickens an hour's access to a concrete slab with a fence around it, with no difference in diet. These companies know that they can produce something which looks like an egg for very little cost and have permission to use labels which protect their practices. Why would they ever change from the cheap way to a more ethically responsible, but more expensive way?

After all, it is common knowledge that sweat shops in Malaysia can produce far cheaper goods by paying their workers pennies per day. If so, then why not ruin the health of hens (who have no voice), in factory farms in order to make a "great looking" egg cost a fraction of a pastured egg's price?

Nava Utse of Misty Morning Sunrise Farms chimes in, "Producing healthy and natural food is far more expensive than most people know. They have no idea how much it actually costs a farmer to produce healthy food. Supermarket prices are so unrealistic and are an indicator of how overarching 'Big Ag' [Big Agriculture - factory farming] has become."

She says, "Small farmers either have to do things that they know are unhealthy for animals or crops by joining Big Ag, or close down because they can’t make a decent living competing with Big Ag, by doing it safely and ethically."

Thomson continues, "Small farms simply can’t compete with the vastly underpriced and 'magically perfect looking food' that pours out of factory farms and into the supermarket. A carton of eggs not only doesn't have the same nutrition your grandparents ate, but also must be perfectly uniform… and eggs that all look exactly the same isn’t just boring, it’s unnatural. True eggs have stains, bumps, ridges, are interesting shapes… we keep a photo gallery."

My recommendation is for you to visit your local farmer or at least visit their website and look carefully at photos of their facility, their hens or broilers, how they are raised and what they eat. For those who are already buying farm fresh pastured eggs, the cost since the crisis hasn't changed. As prices continue to climb for the rest of the American consumer, the news will only get worse.