UNITED STATES: Since highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) was first detected in US birds in January 2022, the price of a carton of a dozen eggs has shot up from an average of about $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022, a 137 percent increase, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The ongoing bird flu outbreak in the US is now the longest and deadliest on record. More than 57 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled since a year ago, and the deadly disruption has helped propel skyrocketing egg prices and a spike in egg smuggling.
Although inflation and supply chain issues partly explain the rise, eggs saw the largest percentage increase of any specific food, according to the consumer price index. The steep pricing is leading some at the US-Mexico border to try to smuggle in illegal cartons, which is prohibited. A US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told NPR this week that people in El Paso, Texas, are buying eggs in Juárez, Mexico, because they are significantly less expensive.
Meanwhile, a customs official in San Diego tweeted a reminder amid a rise in egg interceptions that failure to declare such agriculture items at a port of entry can result in penalties up to $10,000.
Still, America’s pain in grocery store dairy aisles likely pales compared to some of the devastation on poultry farms. HPAI A(H5N1) has been detected in wild birds in all 50 states, and 47 have reported outbreaks on poultry farms. So far, there have been 731 outbreaks across 371 countries. At the end of last month, two outbreaks in Weakley County, Tennessee, affected 62,600 chickens.
Although the virus is highly contagious to birds—and often fatal—the risk to humans is low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the avian influenza Type A viruses (aka bird flu viruses) generally don’t infect humans, though they occasionally can when people have close or lengthy unprotected contact with infected birds. Once in a human, it’s even rarer for the virus to jump from human to human.
In the current outbreak, the CDC has tracked more than 5,000 people who have had contact with infected birds but only found a single case of bird flu in a human. The reported case in Colorado came from a person who worked directly with infected birds and was involved with a cull. The person had mild symptoms and recovered. –arstechnica.com