American consumers have seen unprecedented increases in the cost of animal products over the past few years, with egg prices having more than doubled in the past eighteen months and combined meat, poultry, fish, and egg prices reaching a historic high. While inflation has impacted all food categories, two significant factors have disproportionately driven up animal product prices: the devastating impact of avian influenza, and systematic price manipulation by major meat producers. These price increases reveal deeper issues within our industrial food system and its vulnerability to both natural and human-caused disruptions.
The ongoing avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak has become the deadliest bird flu in U.S. history, leading to the culling of 150 million poultry in the U.S. since early 2022—an average of 138,000 domestic birds slaughtered and discarded every day.
This strain of bird flu, designated a “highly pathogenic avian influenza” or HPAI, spreads rapidly through industrial farming operations where tens of thousands of birds are crowded together in close quarters, providing a perfect petri dish for multiplying the infection. The genetic similarity of commercial broiler chickens amplifies their vulnerability to the illness. Thanks to the global monopoly that just two companies—Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress—hold over broiler chicken breeds, and generations of selective breeding to increase productivity, the chickens on farms largely lack genetic diversity, and their immune systems are often weaker than those of heritage breeds. So when even one bird tests positive, the entire flock of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands must be destroyed to prevent further spread.
Every state in the union has now been affected by outbreaks of the latest highly infectious bird flu in commercial flocks. The mass culling of laying hens has severely disrupted egg production, causing prices to spike dramatically. Grocery stores and restaurants have seen their egg costs rise from $2.25 per dozen last fall to a record $6 or $7 today, with organic and specialty eggs reaching even higher prices.
Grocery stores use eggs as “loss leaders,” discounting egg prices in order to attract customers who then spend more on other products with higher profit margins. So rising egg costs have hit consumers less hard than grocers. But consumers have definitely noticed the price hike; according to the Consumer Price Index, between December 2023 and December 2024 retail egg prices rose a whopping 65 percent.
Some grocery stores have limited the number of cartons of eggs that their customers can purchase on a given day due to egg shortages. At the same time, the loss of broiler chickens as a result of avian influenza has increased chicken meat prices, while the culling of turkeys has led to both shortages and price increases during winter holiday seasons.
The implications go beyond higher prices for retail eggs and poultry. Restaurants, manufacturers, and ingredient producers that have to pay higher egg prices pass their increased costs onto consumers. And it’s not just economics at stake. Public health experts have been ringing alarm bells about the potential for this deadly avian influenza strain, which has already jumped from animals to people, to begin to spread person-to-person, leading to the next global pandemic.
Poultry who have been infected with avian flu shed the virus in their feces, nasal secretions, and saliva. Healthy birds pick up the virus when they come into contact with these substances. The virus can also be spread via surfaces that an infected animal has come into contact with.
Unfortunately, birds are not the only species at risk of contracting avian influenza. In just the United States, there have been 490 confirmed cases of the disease in nonhuman mammals, including 80 domestic cats, in 35+ U.S. states. Among the wildlife victims are mountain lions in California, red foxes in Colorado, and harbor seals in Maine.
The disease can also infect people. While in 2022, there was just one human case in this country, there have been a confirmed 67 human cases of bird flu in the U.S. since 2024, leading to the first human death from bird flu in the U.S., in 2025. This is a rapid increase in human cases, given that only about 954 cases have been reported to the World Health Organization worldwide since 2003. In that time period, half (49 percent) of avian influenza infections in humans proved fatal.
The risk of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) leading to the next human pandemic is so significant that in early 2025, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced awarding $590 million to Moderna to develop vaccines against H5N1, H7N9, and up to four other subtypes of HPAI. Unfortunately, even vaccines that are well matched to strains of HPAI currently circulating in poultry may become far less effective as soon as these influenza viruses mutate—and influenza viruses are notorious for mutating rapidly.
While some of the 145 million poultry who have died in the U.S. due to bird flu died of the H5N1 virus itself, most were apparently healthy birds who were culled due to a concern that they may have been exposed to the virus and could pass it on to people, poultry, or other animals.
The industry kills birds who may have been exposed whether they’re showing signs of disease or not, as a means of preventing the spread of this deadly disease. Some in the industry have also claimed that killing the birds swiftly, usually within 24 hours, helps to prevent the animal suffering that the illness would likely cause.
However, the ways in which thousands of birds are killed at once have drawn widespread criticism for being cruel. One of the prevalent methods is to cover chickens in a water-based foam. The birds are rendered unable to breathe and die of asphyxiation. An alternative but equally cruel method of killing the birds, and one recommended by the USDA, is to seal off the sheds they live in and pump in carbon dioxide, leading to asphyxiation. If for some reason these two methods don’t work, farmers are advised by the department to use “ventilation shutdown.” The airflow into the barns is shut off, and this causes the temperature inside to rise to fatal levels. Producers kill their birds en masse using one of these three methods because it is more cost effective than slaughtering the birds individually.
While economically advantageous for corporations, slaughtering poultry in these high numbers puts workers at particularly high risk for contracting the virus themselves. For example, the Center for Disease Control reported that working in extreme heat under large fans during a “mass depopulation” event on a Colorado egg farm, in which an entire flock of chickens was asphyxiated by carbon dioxide, made it difficult for workers to keep on their protective equipment, likely contributing to the workers contracting five bird flu infections. This mass slaughter strategy also comes at great cost to taxpayers, since the government provides subsidies to poultry producers after a “depopulation” event.
Farm Forward recommends a far more effective means to prevent the spread of bird flu in the U.S., consisting of three steps taken that can be taken simultaneously. First, we recommend that with public health in mind, consumers eat conscientiously, as few poultry products as possible, ideally none. Actively and seriously reducing demand for poultry products will lead to decreased poultry production. Second, poultry producers must take their own role in public health seriously, and shift away from overcrowded, unsanitary barns of genetically modified birds in favor of pasture-raised heritage poultry. Third, poultry should be vaccinated against bird flu to stop the spread. (The USDA recognizes several licensed vaccines for H5N1 in poultry, but the use of these vaccines has not been authorized for this outbreak.)
The EU, China, Ecuador, and Mexico have embraced poultry vaccination against bird flu, with excellent results. For example, from Autumn 2022 and April 2023 France had reported 315 outbreaks, but from Autumn 2023 to April 2024, it reported just 10 outbreaks. Thanks to systemic vaccination of poultry, some countries have temporarily achieved infection-free conditions before isolated flare-ups have recurred.
However, the U.S. industrial producers of chicken meat appear to be uninterested in vaccinating poultry against bird flu. In 2023, The National Chicken Council told CNN that it opposes vaccination largely because vaccination would reduce profits from the export market. The public needs to pressure the government and industrial producers to take the pandemic risk of H5N1 seriously enough to institute systematic vaccination of chickens raised for meat, chickens raised for eggs, and all other poultry.
There is one sure way to address the virus’s spread through poultry: eliminate industrial poultry farming. While completely doing away with mass-confined poultry farms is the most effective way of stopping bird flu, and much progress could be made toward that goal, a complete, country-wide transition away from industrial poultry farming is unlikely in the near future. Therefore, the industry that persists must reinvent itself by providing far more space for the birds, shifting toward hardier breeds, and vaccinating all poultry.
Partly due to ripple effects from avian influenza, cow dairy prices have also risen significantly. When egg prices spike, some consumers switch to cow dairy products as protein alternatives, increasing demand. Additionally, the cost of feeding dairy cattle has risen due to supply chain disruptions and increased grain prices, further driving up the cost of cows’ milk and dairy products.
Notably, cows are susceptible to the current strain of avian influenza, and in just the 10 months following the first detection in U.S. dairy cows in March 2024, 950 dairy herds in 16 states have been infected. Infected cows often produce significantly less milk.
Although fragments of the virus have been found in pasteurized milk, the pasteurization process neutralizes the virus’s ability to infect humans. However, raw cows’ milk can transmit the virus to people. When the FDA tested 275 raw milk samples from four affected states, it found that 14 percent of the milk samples contained actively infectious virus.
While bird flu has created genuine supply challenges for eggs, other poultry products, and cows’ milk and dairy products, investigations have revealed that major meat producers have also exploited economic circumstances to inflate prices artificially. Several recent developments highlight this issue:
Despite the resolution of several price-fixing cases, consumers continue to face high prices for several reasons:
In the United States, four companies (Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and National Beef Packing) control approximately 85% of beef processing, 70% of pork processing, and 54% of chicken processing. This concentration of power allows these companies to:
While some relief could come from
experts suggest that meaningful price reductions would require
The U.S. government’s response to avian influenza has been anaemic, and egg supply issues are likely to be ongoing. Already at a near-record high price as 2025 began, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that egg prices will increase by 20.3 percent by end of 2025.
The current high prices for meat, eggs, and dairy reflect natural challenges, inadequate government responses to bird flu outbreaks, and corporate behavior within our food system. While avian influenza has created genuine supply disruptions, evidence suggests that major meat producers have exploited these circumstances to maintain artificially high prices. These rising costs, combined with concerns about industry consolidation and vulnerability to disease outbreaks, present an opportunity for consumers to reevaluate their food choices.
Many consumers are finding that reducing their consumption of animal products not only helps manage grocery bills but also decreases their exposure to price volatility in the meat and dairy markets. Unsurprisingly, mainstream media is increasingly running stories on alternatives to animal products, such as CNET’s 2025 article “Egg Prices Are Ridiculously High. Try These Alternatives.” For consumers who care about their pocketbooks, it’s significant that plant-based proteins like legumes (beans, lentils, peanuts, etc.), grains, and tofu often cost significantly less per serving than their animal-based counterparts, while providing nutritional advantages. Additionally, these plant-based alternatives aren’t subject to the same supply chain disruptions caused by animal disease outbreaks.
Incorporating more plant-based meals can be both budget-friendly and environmentally conscious. Whether motivated by rising prices, the climate and environment, animal welfare, pandemics prevention, or health considerations, consumers have more ways than ever to reduce their dependence on increasingly expensive animal products while maintaining a nutritious diet.