{"id":341753,"date":"2026-03-12T04:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341753\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T04:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:30:10","slug":"egg-prices-fall-40-as-beef-prices-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341753\/","title":{"rendered":"Egg prices fall 40% as beef prices rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The February consumer price index report might not be the best reflection of the current economy given recent global events, but it does include an Easter egg of sorts. The\u00a0price of eggs dropped by more than 40%<\/a>\u00a0year over year in February, as shortages caused by the longest-running avian flu outbreak<\/a> have stabilized. But that relief in the egg aisle hasn\u2019t translated to other staples.<\/p>\n

Like a lot of savvy shoppers when eggs became a luxury good<\/a>, I got myself a black market egg dealer. (A family friend who keeps chickens.) So I actually hadn\u2019t bought eggs from the grocery store in quite a while.<\/p>\n

At my local supermarket, I saw a dozen large, cage-free eggs for $2.99. Like many Americans, it\u2019s been a while since I saw eggs in the $2 range.<\/p>\n

The national average was $2.50 for a dozen large, grade-A eggs last month, after hitting a high of more than $6 a year ago.<\/p>\n

The shock was specific, but the high cost of eggs came to feel like a symbol of everything that was unaffordable, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key element when it comes to these price categories is what economists call salience, which is essentially how visible these prices are to the average consumer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stores might not post the price of eggs on giant signs like gas stations but consumers have a strong mental anchor of how much a staple should cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so when these prices change, they tend to have an immediate effect, not just on consumer wallets, but also on the psyche of consumers across the U.S.,\u201d Daco said.<\/p>\n

But the drop in egg prices might not stretch as far as consumers hope, said David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at sort of the bigger picture, the drop in egg prices has been offset by the rise of beef prices, and that is because the average American family spends about five times more on beef than eggs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beef\u00a0prices<\/a>\u00a0have been climbing for years<\/a> and aren\u2019t likely to come down any time soon. The number of beef cattle nationwide is the smallest it\u2019s been since the 1960s. You can\u2019t snap your fingers to increase supply, said Phil Lempert with Supermarket Guru.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes about two years from the time a calf is birthed till the time it winds up on our supermarket shelf,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now, a new complication:\u00a0Much of the world\u2019s fertilizer<\/a> \u2014 key to feeding those cattle \u2014 flows through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The February consumer price index report might not be the best reflection of the current economy given recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[20497,72,113,156457,21466,49997,61,60],"class_list":["post-341753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-beef-prices","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-egg-prices","tag-eggs","tag-grocery-prices","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}