CBS News - Egg restrictions, shortages and record-high prices are ruffling feathers at supermarkets across the U.S. as a deadly strain of avian flu continues to decimate the country's poultry flocks. To the dismay of consumers still struggling to digest soaring food costs, that likely means even higher egg prices in 2025.
"I think eggs have felt relatively extreme over the past few months," Kip Green, co-owner and general manager of Montague Diner in Brooklyn, New York, told CBS News. "We're fortunate though, we have a great relationships with our purveyors, with farmers. So everybody is trying to help each other out, which "Yeah, I mean, it's challenging. Like we, we have to figure out how to make it work," said Green. "Eggs are central to us, we are a diner. You have to have an egg plate," she said, adding, "We don't ever want to stop that or to, to make people pay more for something like that. So you figure out how to cut costs elsewhere."
The average price of a dozen large, grade-A eggs was $4.15 in December 2024, up 14% from $3.65 in November, federal data shows. That's a more than 60% increase from the $2.51 it cost a year ago and 160% more than the $1.41 consumers paid for the same carton in 2019, CBS News' price tracker reveals.
By comparison, the overall monthly rate of inflation for food in December was 2.5%, with the cost of food at home rising just 0.3%, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data.
Like a soufflé, egg prices are rising to impressive heights right before our eyes. When will it end? Not anytime soon, according to the USDA, which predicts in a recent report that egg prices will shoot up another 20% this year.
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