Commodities
Cage-Free Chicken Mandates Are Making It Harder to Restock Eggs
- Bird flu ravaged cage-free populations with mandates looming
- Wholesale conventional prices are falling, will trickle down
Chickens roam on a farm in Griffin, Georgia.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Cage-free mandates are adding another kink to egg supply chains tangled by successive outbreaks of avian flu, making it difficult for grocers to restock shelves.
The most recent outbreak of bird flu tore through cage-free chicken facilities, ravaging the supply of so-called specialty eggs. That’s bad news for states that now require eggs in stores to come from cage-free chickens and constricting supply to a market that’s still struggling to emerge from the worst global flu outbreak on record.