Why cage-free eggs are not all theyre cracked up to be

Virtue signaling may be in part to blame for the sky-high price of eggs across the US, with cartons fetching as much as $12 to $15 a dozen in pricey states like California and New York. The current bird flu pandemic has seen nearly 150 million egg-laying hens culled in the US, driving prices through the roof.Liberal California has been one of the hardest hit, where a 2018 law mandated that all eggs produced and sold in the nation’s most populous state be cage-free by 2022 — coincidentally, the same year the current H5N1 outbreak began. The Golden State’s cage-free law is typical of liberalism’s low-information, feel-good priorities that often come with devastating consequences.

For starters, California had been a top egg-producer, but such regulations forced farmers to flee the state and egg production has plummeted.  That didn’t stop the mandate from having a ripple effect across the entire industry, with eight other states following suit, and today 40% of eggs sold in the US are cage-free, up from just 5% in 2010. Until the 2000s, most US chicken farmers had never heard of avian flu.In fact, the previous century saw only three major pandemics.

Since 2004 there have been between five and 15 outbreaks (depending on how they’re defined) with the current one by far the deadliest.And a third of the top 10 worst-hit states mandate cage-free facilities.

In fact, of the 13.6 million egg-laying hens that were depopulated in late 2023, California alone accounted for 30% of the loss, despite producing only an estimated 4% of the nation’s eggs Turns out, social distancing is something governments only enforce on humans, not livestock.But, like humans, socializing doesn’t necessarily mean a biohazard time-bomb for birds.

Avian flu is spread by wild, migratory birds and enters a facility in any number of ways — from duck poop on boots to hitching a ride on rats.While a 2023 USDA analysis found no significant correlation between housing type and init...