Vance mocked for saying eggs cost $4 — while standing in front of a dozen for $2.99

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independent.co.uk

JD Vance was roundly mocked online over a trip to the supermarket where he bemoaned the steep price of eggs — and botched the photo opp.

The Republican vice presidential nominee stopped by a supermarket in Reading, Pennsylvania, with his sons over the weekend to illustrate how grocery prices have been impacted by “Kamala Harris’s policies” when he claimed a dozen eggs cost $4.

The problem? When footage of the visit emerged, Vance was quickly called out by viewers who spotted the price tag of a dozen eggs behind him was actually $2.99.

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I mean, I think that he's got a valid broader point that egg prices haven't been great for a couple of years.

However...that's not really due to anything that Biden has done, much less Harris.

A lot of it was due to major avian flu outbreaks:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-outbreak-egg-prices-2024/

April 24, 2024

A multi-state outbreak of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, is leading to a jump in the price of eggs around the U.S. — an unhappy reminder for consumers that a range of unforeseen developments can trigger inflation.

As of April 24, a dozen large grade A eggs cost an average of $2.99, up nearly 16% from $2.52 in January, according to federal labor data. The price increase comes as nearly 9 million chickens across Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas have been discovered to be infected with bird flu in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is crimping egg supplies, leading to higher prices.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/egg-prices-rise-bird-flu-farm/

September 9, 2024

LONG LAKE, Minn. — Minnesota shoppers may be experiencing some sticker shock as eggs again emerges as a hot commodity.

According to the USDA, the average wholesale price for a dozen large Grade A eggs reached $4.26 in the Midwest region. That's up $0.09 since last week, but up roughly 20% compared to what was recorded in last summer's consumer price index.

"I'm not surprised by the volatility," Loree Kinney, store director at the Orono Market explained. "There's volatility in milk, there's volatility in dairy products, and in meat. There's not much you can do about the supply and demand."

Indeed, economists have for months pointed to a bird flu outbreak as a key reason for dwindling supplies of eggs across the U.S. coming from major producers.

You can't really lay that much at Harris's feet, though.

I do kind of wonder how practical it would be to have some company just store powdered eggs if the prices are going to be jerking around that much. Can't do a sunny-side-up egg or anything like that, but for baking, it should be fine.

Exactly. Egg prices have gone up in large part because factory farming is unsustainable and we're starting to see that with flu outbreaks. Who'da thunk.

Yes, eggs should be from small farms with 12 chickens max each, that should solve everything, quality control, diseases and the high prices on eggs.
Same with everything else, factories make shitty products, you should rather order from a craftsman.
/s

PS:
Oh yes BTW, AFAIK the flu outbreaks started in nature, not on farms.

Edit:
The ignoratum around here is staggering.
I never argued that we shouldn't improve the conditions for chickens, but to argue we can have production in mostly any kind of farming today that isn't heavily mechanized and factory like is extremely ignorant. How else do you feed 300 million people in USA or 700 million in EU efficiently?

I'm downvoted for speaking the truth, and seemingly most people here wants to live a fantasy denying reality.
I personally buy organic eggs, and never from cages, but even that is factories, they just have slightly better conditions.

I know people who have their own chickens laying eggs, but even they can have diseases, so regulation for having your own has been increased a lot here (EU) lately for that too.

You do what you want, but to claim it's feasible to get rid of the "factories" is wishful thinking.
We can however improve the factories, so the chicken get better conditions. And we've been doing that already since the 60's.

.

You’re making a reducto ad absurdum argument by intentionally using absurd quantities and time periods that are not required to accomplish this goal.

OK, how many chickens are required before it becomes an industrial production, and not just hobby level?
Is it less safe to have a few hundred than a dozen? The answer is obviously yes. So the problem claimed in the post I responded to, exist with everything above hobby level production.
So I stand by the argument as valid. And the post I responded to as naive.

  • Unlike the similarly awful 2014 outbreak, you correctly point out that these outbreaks are originating in the wild. And keeping chickens in awful, inhumane conditions where they live in their own filth jam-packed among thousands of other chickens is basically the perfect vector for a pathogen.
  • Getting chickens out of factory farms is a good unto itself, but I doubt you've ever watched any footage or done any research to familiarize yourself with the sorts of horrors you pay for when you buy eggs from a factory farm. Let alone based on your callous attitude that you would actually care about those horrors.
  • Weird strawman that the two kinds of farms that exist are late stage capitalist hellholes where billions of chickens go every year to live a life of unfathomable torture... and your Aunt Betty's backyard chicken coop where every chicken gets a wacky name and their own posts on Facebook documenting their antics.

My mother raises hens and a dozen birds can actually make so many eggs that our entire family has trouble using them all. A bird lays on average one egg a day, and pasture-raised eggs are so rich as to be almost unpalatable to eat directly.

I don't think every farm needs to have some strict limit like that, but more numerous, smaller, more localized farms would be better for everyone in almost every way. Better environmentally, more humane to the birds, people get fresher and higher quality eggs, and more people are employed. Also more limited damage from diseases, droughts, and so on.

Our current system isnt just bad because "factories bad." It's bad because it's heavily centralized and top-down controlled. This is much cheaper to operate and funnels money towards the owner much better, but is so much worse in every way that local farms are better.

We're making millions of birds suffer and getting shittier, more expensive product because of it so less than a dozen people (the real bad eggs) can stay filthy rich.

more numerous, smaller, more localized farms would be better for everyone

Either those farmers would make a lot less money, like barely being able to make a living, or the price of their products would have to be way higher than what we pay today. Like not just a few percent, but a factors higher.

My mother raises hens and a dozen birds can actually make so many eggs that our entire family has trouble using them all.

And?
Do you really believe I don't know that?

pasture-raised eggs are so rich as to be almost unpalatable to eat directly.

WTF? That's bullshit.
Maybe you are confusing them with eggs from free reigning ducks, which IMO taste awful. But from chicken they are really really good.

On the other hand, I can get free range eggs cheaper than your factory made ones in the most expensive parts of the EU, and our population is greater than that of the US, we are feeding more people, yet I can safely eat them raw without the risk of salmonella.

Free range are only marginally better than cages at best.

Sorry, I was thinking of what in English apparently is called barn eggs, which is not really better than cages.
Free range is the best condition for chickens. And absolutely what we should buy.
But this production has problems, like chicken pecking each other way more than "good" cage conditions, because they are kept in larger groups. And is still a factory/industry when at a scale which is needed to fill demand.

US free range and EU free range are not the same by far.

In the US, free range poultry must:

  • have access to the outdoors for more than 51% of the animal's life

In the EU:

  • hens have continuous daytime access to open-air runs throughout their lives
  • the open-air runs to which hens have access are mainly covered with vegetation and not used for other purposes
  • the open-air runs must at least have 4 sqm per hen, with adequate shelter, drinking and feeding facilities

And that's in addition to different food safety standards that make most US poultry non-importable to the EU.

In Canada there's free range and free run. Free run are the indoor bullshit ones, I bought them a couple of times and the yolks are the same piss-yellow as the cheapest factory eggs. Proper free range are worth the $8 or so a dozen imo, the colour and taste is so much better which must at least mean there are some standards

Yes there's a huge difference, free range are definitely better in every way, but also more expensive.
They are also more healthy to eat, because they contain essential fatty acids that occur naturally in eggs, but is lost in cheap production with lower quality feed. Stress and lack of exercise are probably factors too.
The more healthy eggs to eat also taste better.

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Thing is, Biden has been paying farmers for their losses and ramping up inspections to detect and stop spread.

Egg prices would be even worse if Biden was sitting on his ass. We’d have even more of a supply and demand discrepancy.

But, maybe Trump wants to propose injecting chickens with bleach.

Not to mention the price spike on eggs specifically is also way less than he would like to make it appear. Yes, in 2020 dollars, a dozen eggs was $1.50. But adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, that 1.50 is actually about 2 dollars today (inflation being a much broader issue and highly affected by covid). So the price didn't jump from 1.50 to 4 dollars, an increase of 167%, nor even from 1.5 to 3 dollars, an increase of 100%. It only went up from 2 dollars to just under 3 dollars (given the signs), an increase of just under 50 percent. Considering all the avian flu outbreaks that is an entirely reasonable price hike on a high demand good.

I see the point you are trying to make, but inflation doesn't quite when that way.

Comparing the prices of the same commodities at two different points in time is literally how inflation is calculated, the increase from $1.50 to $4 is real.

Now, what the inflation-adjusted dollars are telling you is that if eggs had only increased in price commensurate with general inflation, they would have gone from $1.50 to $2. The extra $2 increase is above what a consumer would expect given the general increase in the prices of everything else. If someone (magically) had a salary that increases with inflation, they would find eggs today to be a larger fraction of their spending if they kept the same level of consumption.

Eggs are more expensive both in absolute and relative to other products. The reasons for this are complex, but due in no small part to people continuing to buy large quantities of eggs even when they were heinously expensive in the early days of the pandemic. The market absorbed that information and came to the conclusion that eggs were previously undervalued.

First, you missed the part where the actual price now is not 4 dollars? He lied. It was 3 dollars, per the sign right behind him.

Second, national inflation is calculated off a broad spectrum of goods and services providing insight into the relative buying power of tthe dollar itself, so it is not missing the point to compare based on the adjusted buying power of the dollar. It is a more accurate reflection of the true rise in cost of this individual good comparing how its rise in price has outpaced the average rise in costs across the board. It reflects the extra pressures put on the egg market from the avian flu outbreaks and possible other factors rather than the general inflation of the entire economy.

Third, if Vance's goal was to demonstrate that inflation in general had gone up tremendously and blame Harris specifically for that (despite how ridiculous that is), using eggs as a specific measure of the effect of their policies when the price hike on eggs have significantly outpaced other goods and is clearly due to non-policy related circumstances outside anyone's control is obviously disingenuous. And that was before he lied and tried to add another 30+ percent on top of the already inflated price.

Intentionally did not talk about Vance, I was merely responding to the idea that using past prices adjusted for inflation compared to current prices isn't that straightforward.

Thanks for the lecture, appreciate the tone.

I think they know this but it won’t help their campaign. That’s the state of US politics. Just like the gas prices. Biden was blamed for increasing gas prices while all the gas companies showed record profits because they just increased their prices.

I know CA voted for more humane living conditions for egg farms years ago. That seemed to have a direct price impact that slowly came down a bit.

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