The price for wholesale eggs has dropped dramatically, per CNBC.
According to Urner Barry, a market research firm focused on things like meat, eggs, and seafood, the price for wholesale eggs dropped to $2.61 a dozen on Monday.
Compare that to the price of a dozen eggs wholesale on Dec. 19: $5.43. As the outlet noted, that’s a drop of 52%.
A senior data analyst at Urner Barry, Angel Rubio, said prices have “collapsed.”
“That’s a big, big adjustment downward,” Rubio said.
This means people might see some relief from the sky-high egg prices of the last several months, which were driven by several factors including an outbreak of avian bird flu, which killed over 58 million birds in 47 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last December, prices for eggs in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada went up 64%. This led to things like waiting lists at small-scale farms selling fresh eggs.
The drop in prices, however, might not immediately correspond to lower prices at the grocery store, CNBC noted.
Rubio told the outlet that wholesale prices are more sensitive than retail ones. If the wholesale price moves 10%, then the retail price would move a corresponding 2% on average, he added. He also said it takes about a month for wholesale price changes to affect consumers.
Brian Moscogiuri, a global trade strategist at Eggs Unlimited, told the outlet that lower demand post-holiday season, and a few weeks without new avian flu outbreaks, have given egg producers and sellers a break.
However, he added, because avian flu has been found among non-chickens, it’s still “a major risk heading into the spring migration,” Moscogiuri told the outlet.
