We're almost at 60 Million dead poultry in the US from H5N1 since Jan '22.
Even before that during covid, there were super long periods of unprofitability for raising turkey to the point that you couldn't even buy whole turkeys in most of the southeastern US for over 10 months.
Monopolies are a problem but certainly not the cause of this one.
I mean, 60 million sounds like a big number, but it seems that the average number of chickens slaughtered per day in the US is somewhere around 24 million birds.
I think you may underestimate the scale of poultry slaughter in the US.
Those are culls, not slaughters. They aren't the same thing. You cannot sell culled chickens for food, they are culled due to disease and are considered biohazard, because they can infect other parts of the flock or other flocks, and in the case of bird flu are also infectious to humans. Generally, the USDA requires a full cull of flocks if any birds are affected. My sister is into urban chickens and bird flu is very much not a joke, and trying to prevent it is hard because humans can carry it and infect chickens and chickens can infect humans.
Also, the chicken you eat and the chicken that lays eggs aren't even the same breed at industrial scale.
Also, I know that many regulations, including USDA regulations, are a bit of a joke in the US, but bird flu is one thing they very much do not fuck around on. The loss of those 60 millions birds is a straight economic loss that's non-recoverable for those egg producers.
"Also, the chicken you eat and the chicken that lays eggs aren't even the same breed at industrial scale."
That, and the numbers from slaughters are chickens being slaughtered for food. Other cull counts are related to male chicks being culled in prepping for egg laying, which is also not relevant.
These are full adult flocks of active egg-layers being culled. It has SIGNIFICANT impact on egg production.
Meat chickens and egg chickens are not the same. Egg chickens take longer to reach productive age, so the market finds it harder to react to supply shocks.
At best, layers take 10 more weeks to produce. The egg price spiked almost a year ago.
Focusing on meat vs egg chickens is beside the point. Cal-Maine’s profit has skyrocketed, even as prices on other things have come back down, so clearly they’re not merely passing their expenses on to the consumer. Read the link at top.
Cory Doctorow is no expert on the US egg/chicken industry. He's writing political opinion pieces here. Occasionally he writes science fiction. He also has big problems with hyperbole in his work.
The egg price spiked almost a year ago because we've been dealing with H5N1 since over a year ago and it has only gotten worse since.
An accusation brought to the FTC by an organization whose founding mission statement is that all of the problems in the farm industry are because of monopolistic corporations. Only a single member of their board/staff even owns a farm.
> price increases are mostly going to shareholders.
I am confused. how are they going to shareholders, unless shareholders are actually selling the stock? how exactly are price increases coming to me as a shareholder.
