Erin Rohler often orders groceries from Whole Foods through its owner, Amazon.
But lately, eggs have been scarce on the site, the West Loop resident said.
“It just says that they’re all out of stock — every type of egg,” Rohler said.
At lunchtime on Tuesday, Rohler meandered over to the egg section of a Whole Foods on North Halsted Street and encountered a sign posted on the glass door of the refrigerated egg section:
“We are currently experiencing difficulty sourcing eggs that meet our strict animal welfare standards. For now, we’re limiting purchases to (three) cartons per customer.”
Avian influenza has forced farmers to slaughter millions of chickens, helping to push U.S. egg prices to more than double their cost in the summer of 2023. The average price per dozen nationwide hit $4.15 in December, and the USDA predicts prices are going to soar 20% this year.
Shoppers in some parts of the country are finding empty egg shelves in their local grocery stores. And some grocery stores are limiting how many cartons shoppers can buy.
For a lot of the eggs that are available in Chicago stores, prices are climbing.
A dozen extra large, organic, Grade A eggs from Vital Farms were going for $10.49 at the Halsted Whole Foods where Rohler shops. At the West Loop Whole Foods on South Canal Street, a dozen large, Grade A eggs from Vital Farms cost $7.99.
A dozen large Grade A eggs from James Farm on a largely empty shelf at the South Loop Market on West Van Buren Street on Tuesday would set a shopper back $7.29. Large Jewel Grade A eggs were on sale at a Jewel-Osco in Wicker Park for $5.99 for a dozen.
At a Mariano’s in River North, where a dozen large Grade A eggs from Simple Truth touted as cage free and grain fed cost $7.29, customers were not permitted to purchase more than two cartons of eggs.
“Due to recent supply shortages, the cost to source eggs that meet our strict quality standards has increased drastically,” a posted sign stated.
Mariano’s Ravenswood this week was offering Dutch Farms Grade A large eggs on sale for $7.99 per dozen. Cage-free, organic eggs were priced at $10.99 for a carton of 18 eggs. That store also was limiting purchases to two cartons per customer.
J.T. Bradshaw, who was pushing a cart around the River North Mariano’s at lunchtime, said he buys eggs almost every time he goes to the grocery store.
In the past month, Bradshaw has had a bit of trouble finding eggs. He’s gone to a few grocery stores that didn’t have any eggs, he said. But he said he didn’t fully realize the connection to bird flu.
“I don’t think I knew it had to do with the flu,” Bradshaw said. “I’ve seen a couple news stories run. But truthfully, I didn’t really pay attention to it. I knew something was going on.”
Bradshaw said the egg shelf at the store looked stark.
In the Whole Foods on North Halsted Street, Kevin Miao was getting some regular grocery shopping done Tuesday.
Miao, who lives near the Whole Foods, said bird flu has been on his radar since the tail end of 2024.
“We heard about it at the end of last year around Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he said. “But we didn’t really notice it locally until the beginning of this year.”
Now about half the time Miao goes to the grocery store, the egg shelf seems “kind of empty,” he said. A couple times, the store has been out of eggs.
“It’s OK. We can skip a day. … It’s not the end of the world,” Miao said.
A bird flu outbreak that began in 2022 is the main reason egg prices have shot up. When the virus is found on a poultry farm, the entire flock is slaughtered to help limit the virus’ spread. And with massive egg farms housing up to one million or more chickens, just a few infections can cause a supply crunch.
More than 145 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been slaughtered since the current outbreak began, with the vast majority of them being egg-laying chickens.
One of the nation’s top egg producers confirmed Tuesday that one of its farms has tested positive for cases of bird flu. Rose Acres Farms, which says it is the second-largest egg producer in the U.S., released a statement saying that it had detected cases of avian influenza at a farm in Seymour, Indiana.
More than five dozen people have become ill with bird flu and one person has died since March. Nearly all of them worked around sick animals. Health officials haven’t found evidence of the disease spreading from person to person.
The Associated Press contributed.
