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Comment by mint2 | Hacker News Reader

Actually there’s more. On Jan 1st several more states laws about animal welfare went into effect whereas before essentially only California had those requirements. The supply of eggs meeting those requirements had not been ramped up to meet the step in demand. I expect that disruption will be temporary.

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So why then are my Pasture Raised Organic eggs increasing at the same rate as budget eggs. These regulations would not impact those operations

Demand is a conveyer belt.

Someone who has disposable income but doesn't care would buy normal eggs before, lowering the demand for regulation-compliant eggs.

Now, the store only stocks regulation compliant eggs, so that's what the person buys, increasing demand.

Not seeing that here in LA. The organic brown eggs seem to be holding price pretty well. I thought it was just slow movement and that the next shipment would have higher prices but so far so good.

Because the seller of those eggs can raise prices while they are (at least for now) in possession of an item which has excess demand relative to supply. You could look at this as compensation for early adoption of tighter regulations, as a natural variation in the prospects of their business, or as evil price-gouging. Which you choose to focus on is a choice that will vary from person to person.

Because the company you are buying from what doing the minimum to achieve the "Pasture Raised Organic" label, which is not a very high bar. These laws impact them just as much as the "budget eggs".

To be a "free-range" or "pasture-raised" chicken you simply need access to the outdoors. So, these animals are kept in the same cramped, feces-filled hothouses that the "budget chickens" are, but there's a tiny hole in the side of the barn where they can access a tiny bit of grass. That's it.

There is no incentive for these companies to do anything above the bare minimum; you will never find a large-scale egg supplier that raises chickens in the idyllic environment you may picture in your head.

I hate HN sometimes. You are being downvoted for being one of the only people in this thread that has actual direct experience on this matter due to political beliefs.

Organic/Free range labeling is almost an outright scam. Very few operations (almost guaranteed to not be one you see in your grocery store) are what people imagine when they see this marketing. Most operations you could not tell the difference between chickens raised for that label vs. the "factory farm" operation across the street.

Source: family is organic market garden farmers, sells free range eggs. Organic labeling is one of the biggest scams I've ever personally witnessed.

If you actually care about this (almost no one does, they just say they do), you need to buy eggs direct from the source. Period. There is no other way to get what you are imagining.

Pasture Raised is the more important Labeling, I agree Organic and Free Range is meaningless

That is true for Free Range which is basically meaning less, but Free Range is not the same as Pasture Raised

Normally Pasture Raised means

- at least 1.8 square feet of indoor floor space each

- continuous access to a vegetation-covered outdoor area in which to roam and forage

- at least 4 square feet of outdoor space each

- access to perching and nesting boxes

I buy from Small Farms also...

They're all basically the same. Different labeling groups have different requirements, it doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is that the business is going to do whatever it takes to make as much money as possible, and that means less space and freedom for the animals. You can come up with as many requirements as you want, but the egg producers, like any business, will do as little as they possibly can do to meet them. It's just not possible to treat these animals with empathy when your job is to take from them as much as you can while giving them as little as you can.

As bare as these requirements are, they only exist because without them there is literally no reason to try. And even with them, there is only the incentive to legally meet the requirements, nothing else. The labels are for us, not the chickens.

It’s more complicated than that, please reference the Whole Foods egg producer standards document.

For anyone who cares little about that distinction, those two products are basically the same thing. In economic terms, they are substitutes.

Because now people like me who didn't care about organic or not are buying any eggs available. In our store all the vegan substitutes were sold out too (never seen that before). We ended up buying a carton of egg whites, which was all that was left.

But then we went back the next day and they had a few dozen eggs.

Eggs and fancy eggs are substitutes for each other. When regular eggs get more expensive people shift to fancy eggs so their prices go up too.

Because when my generic store-brand eggs are sold out, I will be looking to buy your Pasture Raised Organic eggs.

Or: the only reason I was buying generic eggs in the first place was that they were half the price of your Pasture Raised Organic eggs. Once they are almost the same price, I might as well buy Pasture Raised Organic eggs.

> So why then are my Pasture Raised Organic eggs increasing at the same rate as budget eggs.

Why would a seller sell them for any less than they can get? Farms tend to be incredibly low margin businesses, so selling below market is just utterly silly.

Prices are set at the margin, they are not set by cost of production other than to act as a floor where companies outright go out of business.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_good

Yea this also. Colorado, one of the major state producers requires all chickens who produce eggs for sale to be cage free as of January 1st.

Same here in Massachusetts.

As an athlete who eats like a highschool linebacker (in Colorado), I've been watching eggs prices climb up $0.50 each week for a dozen, then jump $3 in one week. Now there's none on the shelves at all.

What is the intent of this change?

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