100,000 Eggs Are Stolen in Pennsylvania Amid Shortage

The Pennsylvania State Police said this week that they were investigating the theft on Saturday of 100,000 organic eggs worth more than $40,000 from a distribution trailer in Greencastle, in south-central Pennsylvania.The eggs were stolen at around 8:40 p.m.from a facility operated by Pete & Gerry’s Organics, according to a police report.“The thieves could sell them or even use them for vandalizing purposes,” Trooper Megan Frazer, a State Police spokeswoman, said in an email on Wednesday.

“We don’t know what purpose of stealing 100,000 would be for at this time.With the extreme increased price of eggs, someone may have thought they could sell them.”“The only thing similar I have encountered during my career,” she added, “was a stolen trailer full of ‘tainted chickens.’”Eggs have been a prominent feature in the national news cycle.

Their rising cost was a talking point in the presidential campaign.Suppliers are warning about the impact of avian influenza on availability and prices.

And this week, Waffle House introduced a 50-cent surcharge on every egg it serves.(The chain says it serves more than 272 million eggs a year.)In Pennsylvania, the trail has gone quiet, at least publicly, since the nighttime raid.

But at a time when shoppers across the country are facing empty shelves and higher prices when shopping for eggs, the theft has drawn outsize attention to what would ordinarily be seen as a local event.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....