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Are you cooking up some eggs today? You probably paid a premium. Avian flu has wiped out millions of egg-laying chickens in the United States, putting a big crack in the nation's egg supply. But in Canada, there's no such shortage. NPR's Scott Horsley explains why.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Here in the U.S., egg prices have soared to record highs, if you're lucky enough to find a carton. Just north of the border, though, if you want some eggs to go with your Canadian bacon, it's a very different story.
MIKE VON MASSOW: We have not had any shortage of eggs. We can choose from 14 different types of eggs.
HORSLEY: Mike von Massow is a food economist at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
VON MASSOW: I get calls from reporters here in Canada, and they say, well, we're hearing all this about eggs. And I said, well, that's in the U.S. It's not happening here.
HORSLEY: Canadian chickens can catch avian flu, just like their American cousins, but the fallout for Canada's egg supply has been much less severe. Von Massow says there are a number of reasons for that. It gets colder up north, so barns are more tightly sealed, which helps keep virus carried by wild birds out. Canada also has fewer free-range chickens, which are more vulnerable to getting infected.
But perhaps the biggest difference is that egg farms in Canada are a lot smaller, so when one farm does suffer an outbreak, the effects are less far reaching. The typical egg farm in Canada has about 25,000 laying hens, whereas many farms in the U.S. have well over a million. In effect, American farmers have put a lot more of their eggs in a relatively small number of baskets.
VON MASSOW: If individual farms represent a larger proportion of production, then when an individual farm is affected, you're taking more of that supply, right?
HORSLEY: American egg farms weren't always so big. The typical farm here has quadrupled in size since the late 1990s. Poultry economist Jada Thompson at the University of Arkansas says the competitive pressure in the U.S. to produce cheap food encourages farmers to make it up with volume.
JADA THOMPSON: These companies aren't making tons of money per egg. They're just selling a lot of eggs.
HORSLEY: That industrialized agriculture model often delivers. For most of the last eight years, eggs have been cheaper in the U.S. than in Canada. But Thompson says there are trade-offs.
THOMPSON: The benefits have been affordable eggs at lower prices. This is one of those costs that come from a - if a disease gets in a house, now you have a much larger population that's impacted versus a smaller house.
HORSLEY: Farmers here have lost 50 million egg-laying chickens to avian flu in just the last four months. It'll take at least six more months to rebuild the flock. In the meantime, egg prices are expected to keep climbing.
And egg farms aren't the only choke points in the highly concentrated U.S. food supply. Recent years have shown how the closure of one big slaughterhouse or baby formula factory can trigger price spikes and empty store shelves around the country.
So what's kept Canadian egg farmers relatively small? Von Massow points to Canada's supply management system, which guarantees even small farmers enough income to stay in business.
VON MASSOW: There is less incentive to grow because I can make money at this size. There is still incentive to be efficient, but there is not a requirement to get as big.
HORSLEY: Canada also restricts the import of U.S. farm products like eggs and dairy, which is one source of friction in the current trade war. The USDA is looking to temporarily boost imports to help meet demand, while U.S. farmers try to rebuild their flocks. The department also says it's studying other country's best farm practices.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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