In the face of an egg shortage in the Bay Area and greater California, food banks were left struggling to find eggs to provide for the communities they serve.
CAPTION. AkirEVarga (Pixabay)
It’s right after the New Year, and graduate students, staff, and faculty at Stanford University are all looking for the same thing: eggs. However, in groceries and supermarkets around Palo Alto, eggs have all but disappeared from the shelves. Even Costco, widely known for its massive supply, limited sales to one dozen per family. For some communities, this egg shortage was critical due to the inability of food banks to acquire this nutritious staple.
These communities rely on food banks to provide fresh, free food. Maya Murthy, Vice President of Programs and Services of Second Harvest Food Bank of Silicon Valley, stated that “the prices of eggs went up for us by nearly 300%”, making it difficult for the organization to provide for its clients. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley is the largest food bank in Silicon Valley, and one of the largest in the nation, and for it to have struggled to meet demand is an indication
of the severity of this shortage and the need for backup plans for future shortages.
This recent shortage is partially attributable to a new strain of avian flu that wiped out millions of chickens in the United States in 2022 in combination with a California law that went into effect also last year mandating that all eggs sold in the state come from cage-free hens, according to Murthy. The two causes combined to drastically reduce available supply of eggs in California at the retail level, leaving shelves empty and forcing people to go to multiple stores in search of a single container of eggs.
While well-intended, the impact of the legislation in times of vulnerable supply, such as earlier this month, led to disproportionate effects on low-income families. The skyrocketing price of eggs impacts lower-income families especially hard, as food makes up a larger percentage of their income than a higher-income family. If the price of eggs reaches $7.37 a dozen, as it did in some places in California during January of this year, these families will not be able to adjust their spending; they simply cannot afford to buy eggs.
Instead, these families rely on food banks to provide food in times of crisis. However, food banks like Second Harvest of Silicon Valley also felt the effects of the shortage.
It was “challenging for Second Harvest to provide this highly valued food” to their clients, says Murthy. She also mentions how “food banks across the country are experiencing the same challenges that we have been”, and how SHFB’s (Second Harvest Food Bank) partner organizations have also experienced the same difficulties in acquiring eggs.
CAPTION. Second Harvest Food Bank Homepage
In addition to the factors mentioned already, inflation and egg demands during the holiday season contributed to the severity of the shortage. During the holiday season, eggs are in especially high demand because of baked goods and other dishes that use eggs, and this is part why the shortage was felt in early January, instead of the end of last year, when the chickens were slaughtered. Inflation also contributed to the increasing cost of feed and fuel needed to produce and transport the eggs to market.
However, the California legislation, along with the avian flu, most clearly impacted the shortage this time around. But this is not to say that California should do away with the new law; cage-free eggs offer benefits for the animals, and crucially, for the agricultural system as a whole.
According to Murthy, “The instance of bird flu killing so many birds is a symptom of a farming industry that needs to change. The factory farm model needs to be dismantled.”
The farming industry currently relies on genetically similar individuals that are packed into tight areas in massive numbers; a more perfect environment couldn’t exist for a virus like the recent avian flu to spread.
Murthy then offers a solution: “The move of more states to cage-free eggs is promising, but will take time for supply and demand to work themselves out”. Murthy is right—cage-free eggs are a step in the right direction. However, the hens are often still raised in tight quarters and in large numbers.
Pasture-raised eggs, on the other hand, require hens to have continuous access to open pasture with vegetation, as well as increased indoor space, which reduces the number of hens per operation. This can decrease the risk of a virus wiping out an entire flock of chickens, and might be what Murthy envisions as the dismantling of the factory farm model.
While ambitious, these changes could lead to a future where no family has to suffer the absence of a necessary staple, and where California’s goals of environmental action align with environmental justice.
Stanford affiliates are once again able to buy eggs in nearby grocery stores. While the egg shortage is still ongoing, the effects are no longer as severe as the early weeks of this year. Building resilience into our agricultural systems can ensure that all people’s food needs are met, regardless of their means.
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Henry Lai is an Earth Systems undergraduate student in his third year at Stanford. He is passionate about food and water access issues, and community-based responses to environmental issues. Henry is relatively new to journalism but has always enjoyed hearing people’s stories about what matters to them. He has lived his whole life in the Bay Area, and enjoys hiking, climbing, and exploring the incredible diversity of food cultures in the area.
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