As bird flu spreads, Missourians pay the price at the grocery store

by Meg Cunningham, Missouri Independent
February 14, 2025

For some people in rural Missouri, soaring egg prices have little impact on their shopping habits. They have backyard chickens that save them the trouble of dealing with a nationwide shortage.

But for those who don’t have access to a homegrown grocery store in their backyard,  rising prices mean changes to their weekly shopping list.

“I’m going to have to stop buying eggs,” said Margaret Bunch, a Callaway County resident who relocated to the area over a year ago from Brookfield, Missouri.

“Back in Brookfield… I knew people who had chickens,” Bunch said. “I would have tried to buy (eggs) if they had plenty. But I’m not that well acquainted with people here.”

Bunch is feeling the pain of rising egg prices in central Missouri, where one dozen can run upwards of $6. A form of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1, picked up in October and began spreading quickly through the country toward the end of the year. It’s deadly for birds, who usually pick the disease up from wild birds traveling through their farm, but it can infect mammals, like livestock and humans.

In the last 30 days across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 23 million birds have been tested and confirmed for avian influenza.

It’s putting poultry farmers across the country on edge as they try to respond to what epidemiologists call an endemic. Georgia this week lifted a statewide ban on poultry sales and auctions that it imposed after bird flu was detected in the northeastern part of the state. Poultry from 103 commercial farms in the area are still subject to quarantine, but the mechanisms that get chicken and eggs to our grocery stores are allowed to resume.

While there is little risk of bird flu spreading to the general public, the effects on consumers are widespread.

In December alone, retail egg prices were up 8.4%. From December 2023 to December 2024, egg prices rose 36.8%, USDA said. The average price of one dozen grade A eggs went up nearly 50 cents from November to December last year.

Egg prices aren’t expected to drop anytime soon. The USDA predicts prices will increase about 20% over the course of the year, compared to just over 2% for other food products.

Missouri has been subject to similar outbreaks, just not on such a large scale.

At least 4 million of the 23 million birds infected in the last 30 days have been in Missouri. Southwestern Missouri counties like Newton, Lawrence, McDonald and Jasper have been the most affected, but few of those farms produce the eggs we buy. Many farms affected in Missouri produce turkey or chickens raised for meat, and prices for poultry other than eggs are expected to rise slightly throughout the year.

Reported cases in Missouri started picking up in mid-December, USDA data show. 

Missouri officials responded by pausing swap meets and auctions — where farmers buy, sell or trade animals — in the impacted southwest Missouri counties.

It’s the state’s first line of response when addressing the spread of the disease, which came to the U.S. in 2022 and has been spreading among birds since.

“There’s not an end,” said Steve Strubberg, the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s chief veterinarian. “We are just working towards an end and trying to keep it contained in these smaller areas. We don’t want it to affect anything statewide.”

Although the virus has been spreading throughout the country for years, this particular outbreak has affected hens that lay eggs, Strubberg said.

The virus typically spreads between birds through their feces and saliva. It’s usually picked up by wild birds, which may stop off at a farm during their winter migration because it has a water source. Then, poultry at that farm may visit the water source and contract bird flu due to the illness that wild birds left behind.

The types of land that are optimal for dairy or meat production are also attractive for migrating birds like ducks and geese, according to Maurice Pitesky, a specialist at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“Overlapping of wild animals and domesticated farm animals — it’s created a higher probability of transmission,” Pitesky said in a briefing with reporters. “It’s not the only way the virus is transmitted, but it certainly makes it a riskier scenario.”

Large commercial operations are likely better positioned to deal with an outbreak before it spreads too far, because those chickens are typically kept indoors and don’t come into contact with wild birds.

“The risk is harder on those smaller operations,” Strubberg said. “Their birds stay outside and are often exposed to migrating waterfowl.”

Consumers in Missouri may have noticed that during the current  shortage it has been more difficult to find cage-free or pasture-raised eggs in stores. A handful of states have laws in place that ban the sale of eggs that are not raised through those methods, and national grocery chains like Whole Foods have done the same.

Bird flu is having a disproportionate impact on cage-free egg layers. About one-third of hens used for eggs were cage-free, but accounted for 60% of bird flu cases for 2024.

This week, Nevada confirmed its first human case of bird flu in a dairy farm worker who was exposed through cattle. A total of 78 cases were confirmed in humans in the U.S. last year, primarily people who work on poultry or dairy farms.

Human symptoms include a fever, sore throat, body aches and fatigue, similar to a typical flu virus.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends those who are in close contact with animals wear personal protective equipment to prevent coming into contact with disease particles.

“One of the real challenges, especially in agriculture, is you have a lot of workers that are undocumented,” Pitesky said.

“Especially because a lot of these workers live in multi-generational, multi-familial homes, the virus can spread really quickly in those environments and spread even further before any kind of detection is made,” he added.

The Jasper County Health Department is working closely with poultry farmers to monitor employees who may start showing symptoms.

“We’re recommending they seek testing through a local facility and take Tamiflu or an antiviral as needed,” said Debbie Darby, the county’s health department administrator. They recommend workers wear personal protective equipment while interacting with animals or in spaces they occupy.

Poultry and meat products sold on the shelves of grocery stores are safe to consume. Unpasteurized dairy products can result in a person contracting the virus, said Taylor Nelson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Missouri. But the risk of the virus spreading from person to person is very low, she said.

“Monitoring for any changes in transmission patterns of avian influenza is very important, so if viral mutation does happen, we can identify it and try to stop the spread,” she said in an email. “For now, the risk of catching avian influenza from another person is very low.”

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