Background

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a severe viral disease that devastates infected bird populations, with mortality rates often exceeding 75%. Since 2022, the global spread of the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b variant has posed particular concern due to its broad cross-species infectivity, impacting diverse animals including poultry, livestock, and wildlife, as well as raising significant public health alarms with confirmed human infections.

The economic toll of HPAI has been staggering to US agriculture. Since February 2022, the outbreak has resulted in the loss of over 169 million farm birds, causing severe disruptions to food production and supply chains. Due to the highly pathogenic nature of the disease, when the virus is detected, the entire flock must be culled to prevent prolonged suffering and spread of the disease. Out of affected birds, 77% have been egg-laying hens, with the majority of HPAI damage to the poultry industry landing on the egg sector. The depopulation and associated costs are then reimbursed by the US government (USDA APHIS) via indemnity payments. Since the beginning of the outbreak in 2022, $1.8 billion of taxpayer money has been spent by APHIS on HPAI response activities.

Mass depopulation of laying hens immediately constrains the egg supply, causing prices to rise in a straightforward “supply-and-demand” response. After depopulation, barns must be cleaned, disinfected, and left fallow for at least 14-21 days until environmental samples test negative for HPAI. Even then, supply cannot rebound overnight: replacement pullets must be hatched and reared to around 18 weeks before they start laying, so more than five months can pass before a farm regains pre-outbreak output. These delays propagate through the supply chain, keeping egg prices elevated long after the initial cull.

Increase in Egg Prices

Supply shocks due to HPAI caused the price of eggs to spike multiple times in recent years. Major price increases were seen during outbreaks in 2015-2016, 2022-2023, and most recently in 2024-2025. In March 2025, egg prices reached an all-time high of $6.22 per dozen.

Methodology

Price

• The monthly BLS egg price data was used for the price of retail eggs. The price of breaker eggs was estimated at 60% of the price of retail eggs, based on USDA AMS’s Egg Markets Overview.

• All prices are in 2024 dollars with annual December inflation rates taken from the US Inflation Calculator.

Production Volume

• The national monthly egg production numbers from USDA NASS were used.

Usage Volume

• Usage volume was calculated as the number of eggs produced in a given month multiplied by the percentage used by the retail and breaker sectors.

• The portion of production volume going to retail versus breaker eggs was referenced from IncredibleEgg (citing USDA Livestock, Poultry, and Grain Market News) and the United Egg Producers (citing USDA AMS).

• Retail eggs were estimated at 55% of the total market, plus 5% exported eggs which are usually priced at retail or higher, for 60% of the total market share. Breaker eggs were estimated at around 30% of the total market, plus 10% of food service eggs which are usually priced at breaker or higher, for 40% of the total market share.

For every month in the 12-month period between May and April inclusive, the price of retail and breaker eggs were multiplied by their usage volumes, and then all twelve months were summed to calculate the total yearly egg market for these sectors. We then compared the average absolute difference between 2024-2025 and previous years, excluding the four HPAI years of 2014-2016 and 2022-2024. 

Further Impacts

The cost to egg consumers and tax payers are only part of the total economic toll of bird flu on Americans. For example, in addition to paying more for eggs, US taxpayers spent $1.8 billion on response activities since the beginning of the current outbreak, such as indemnity payments to compensate farmers for the value of destroyed birds.

Additionally, multiple important trading partners, such as China and Mexico, have banned exports from some U.S. states since the beginning of the 2022 outbreak, representing substantial losses of export revenues for American farmers. 

The dairy industry has also been significantly impacted by the virus. Herds which are infected with the virus can often see a 10% to 20% decline in milk production, alongside increased medical and labor costs related to sanitation and treatment. The US federal government (HHS and APHIS) have recently dedicated $200 million to stop the spread of H5N1 among dairy cows, hoping to prevent the sort of price spikes we’ve seen with eggs. Notably, USDA has been providing financial assistance through the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP) and as of this writing, 931 producer applications have been processed, with ~$355.8 million paid out to affected farmers. These ELAP payments provide one partial metric of the economic damage from HPAI infected dairy cows, but this likely understates the full impact from uncompensated losses, market disruptions, and ongoing biosecurity costs.

If bird flu turns into a greater human health emergency, then the costs to society could be significantly larger. The prediction market Metaculus gives avian influenza a 66% chance of being declared a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern” by the World Health Organization by 2030.

Whether or not a pandemic level virus will emerge can be hard to predict. As a recent article in Science discussed, "from a single transmission event from a wild bird to dairy cattle in December 2023, there has been cattle-to-poultry, cattle-to-peridomestic bird, and cattle-to-other mammal transmission". Although humans have been infected with H5N1, no human-to-human transmission events have been recorded since the 2022 outbreak began.

Juan Cambeiro, a superforecaster at the Institute for Progress, has estimated that an H5N1 pandemic on the scale of COVID-19 could have economic costs greater than $16 trillion. He assigns that scenario a 4% probability, yielding an expected economic cost of roughly $640 billion. Prediction-market prices echo that order of magnitude: since February 2025, contracts on Polymarket have implied a 3–12 percent chance of a COVID-level pandemic.

To understand the consumer impact of the most recent price, we calculated the total spending on eggs from May 2024 through April 2025 and compared it with similar periods from years without ongoing HPAI outbreaks. This comparison highlights the additional amount Americans paid due to the current, ongoing outbreak, providing an indication of potential continued consumer costs if the outbreak persists.

Between May 2024 and April 2025, Americans spent an extra $14.5 billion on eggs, bringing total expenditures to $29.9 billion—almost double the $15.3 billion average seen in non-HPAI years.

Policy Recommendation

According to the CDC, HPAI is now endemic (enzootic) among wild birds in North America, meaning that the virus has taken up permanent residence in local wildlife and circulates year round. HPAI is a seasonal illness and new infections in commercial flocks are often caused by migratory birds. This is why we saw egg prices spike in both 2022-2023 and 2024-2025, stemming from the same outbreak. Therefore, unless proactive preventative measures are taken, another price spike is likely to happen. As of this writing, egg prices have come down significantly since March 2025, but this does not mean that avian flu has been beaten. 

Producers across the egg, broiler, dairy, and turkey industries support a national livestock vaccination program, as long as the ability of American producers to export poultry products are not affected. Such a program would mitigate the effects of the disease, protect the livelihoods of American farmers, and prevent future spikes in the prices of eggs. Therefore, the Trump administration should prioritize a US vaccination strategy in ongoing negotiations with key trading partners. 

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