Don't wait to buy your eggs — more price hikes could be coming

• Egg prices are going up again as the US copes with a new outbreak of avian influenza. 
• The country's largest egg producer confirmed a new outbreak of the flu at a Kansas facility last week.
• Egg prices doubled in some states in late 2022 after an outbreak of avian flu.

The cost of eggs appears to be spiking for the second time in a year as the US faces a new bout of avian influenza.

Egg prices at grocery stores rose 11.4% in November, with most of the increase coming at the end of the month, data provider Datasembly said on Friday. The data is based on on-the-shelf prices collected at stores, a spokesperson for Datasembly told Insider.

Demand for eggs — and, consequently, their prices — typically increase during the holidays as consumers bake Christmas cookies and other seasonal treats. But the latest increase seems driven by more than that.

Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the US, said Tuesday that it paused production at one of its Kansas facilities after chickens tested positive for avian flu.

The facility includes about 684,000 egg-laying chickens, or 1.6% of the company's entire flock.

"Cal-Maine Foods is working to secure production from other facilities to minimize disruption to its customers," the company said in a statement.

An outbreak of avian flu in the US sent egg prices higher toward the end of 2022. Last November, prices rose 49% over the same month in 2021 — an exceptional increase, even as prices for many types of food were rising fast.

By the end of the year, egg prices had risen by 59% nationally and more than doubled in some states. By this April, the outbreak had claimed the lives of 58 million birds, including many chickens in egg-laying flocks. At some stores, organic eggs sold for less than regular eggs.

Since then, the outbreak has subsided, and the prices that shoppers pay for eggs at the store has fallen for most of 2023, according to consumer price data from the federal government. Those prices fell 22% in the year leading up to November.

But wholesale prices, or what retailers and others pay egg producers, rose 71% between October and November, according to the Producer Price Index.

So far, the outbreak isn't having the same effect on egg prices and availability as last year's bout of avian flu. But some buyers of wholesale eggs have increased their purchasing due to "doubts over the impact of continuing outbreaks," a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on the egg market published Friday reads.

A spike in egg prices would run counter to most other food prices. Broadly, inflation for other grocery items has slowed down or reversed course over the last few months after roughly two years of historic increases.

Executives at Kroger, the US's largest supermarket operator, said in November that they expect food inflation to increase at a slower rate going into 2024.