The Great Egg Heist | Hacker News Reader

The Great Egg Heist

washingtonpost.com

26 pointstintinnabula14 comments

Mildly related: I have not seen eggs in the Falkland Islands' stores since at least late-April... I know some times early morning people have been able to buy them, but the stock wont last until lunch time. It's been months since I had an omelette, or whatever... true story.

Just to complement, in recent times, there's been points were there is no milk for a month, or more... Toiler paper, flour, bottled water, and a few other items... the one thing I have never seen a shortage of is beer.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/

I know!!! I can't at the moment... I'd love to have my own chickens just wandering about and performing random actions... but I need my own place first.

Somewhat related, US border officials noticed an increase of eggs smuggled into the US (+116% from Canada):

* https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/us-border-officials-hav...

* http://archive.is/https://thelogic.co/news/canada-us-trade-w...

* https://archive.is/https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexico-egg-s...

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-border-fentanyl-eggs-1.7486...

In Toronto, Canada, egg prices (for a generic large dozen white) have gone from about $2 (CAD) in the pandemic nadir to nearly double that today. But they've done so in fairly regular steps, without any fanfare or unusual spikes/drops (and the current price has been steady for a while now, I'd guess about a year).

It's been very strange to me hearing all these reports about egg prices in the US, because all the other meat and dairy items still seem to be cheaper for you guys (I've found myself quite envious in the past).

It’s a classic consolidation play and evolution of US legal theory with respect to anti-trust. 50% of US hens are owned by the top 5 companies, and 20% are owned by the largest company.

We also have consolidation of grocers and elimination of wholesale distribution, so the thousand cuts add up. You see it when you compare a grocery like Aldi that does cost plus pricing to a chain like Hannaford or Albertsons that does more fuckery with segmentation and pricing. In January, my local Hannaford was charging $9/doz for eggs, while Aldi ranged from $4-6.

Beef and dairy have more market dynamics, although dairy is slowly but surely getting strangled and regional dairy is dying out.

https://archive.ph/2025.06.21-131040/https://www.washingtonp...

Mandatory reading: the one thousand dozen by Jack London

https://shortstoryamerica.com/pdf_classics/london_one_thousa...

"The hens were unaware of the heist. They had done their part: the shuffling around, the squatting down, the gentle plop! to release one perfect orb"

Someone tell me if i'm wrong, but I've always understood a "perfect" orb to be basically a sphere shape, so what's with this about eggs being perfect orbs?

> About 1 of every 5 eggs sold in America are laid by a Cal-Maine hen.

Jesus, what a lot of market concentration. Alone the lack of genetic diversity... because there's no way in hell that such a large company doesn't want only the most profitable chicken they can get, and only that kind of chicken.

> What the deputies remembered most about the Warwick farm, though, was the time in 2011 when a fire killed 300,000 hens.

And that is just as harrowing. How the fuck are such large stables even allowed, why does regulation not demand separate stables and enough clearance to prevent the spread of fire?

But it's just chicken, eh, who cares about them...

Suffering is inherent in large, cheap meat sources. It doesn't matter what kind of animal it is. Once you hit factory production levels, the amount of misery skyrockets. It's why I was vegetarian before we could raise our own meat and dairy livestock.

It wouldn't be that much more expensive to have at least some basic animal welfare standards during raise and slaughter. But hey, those 13.56% yield [1], they don't come from nothing, and the stonk markets want their profit, animal welfare be damned.

[1] https://www.nasdaq.com/de/market-activity/stocks/calm/divide...

Matt Stoller claims that the USA's problems with egg prices are a result of a European duopoly on hen breeding and USA cartels leveraging exclusivity agreements. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not.

funny. i enjoyed this article.

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