ava's blog

egg prices and more

For years, there's been people offline and online around me who were going on about how if we wanted to make meaningful changes against climate change, the government should ban it or significantly increase the price, so most people would be priced out of buying animal products. I don't agree with this, because this would just make it a luxury item and create a blackmarket. But now, for other reasons, we can sort of see it in action. Maybe it's a false hope, but I do hope the people who have this view see that this is not the solution.

At the same time, I've had people complain to me that xyz is more expensive so they'd continue eating animal products because they're cheaper. Now animal products, depending on where you live, are a ton more expensive and they still eat them. Doesn't make sense to me. When will people run out of excuses? They're not a human right, they're a thing we came to enjoy in massive quantities for a time and it's becoming more and more difficult with pandemics, space needed for these operations, climate change and awareness of the cruelty needed to facilitate the production.

Frankly, there is too little talk about where the price increases even come from. It's easy to just point to corporate greed (which definitely, it partially is) instead of also looking at the fact that the avian flu is wreaking havoc on not just chickens but also cows. So many illnesses we had to worry about and still have to worry about exist because people cannot stop consuming these products. The avian flu, the swine flu, Covid - all relied on close contact between animals and humans on that scale.

Now one of them is requiring the mass-culling of chickens, so of course that would affect egg production. Shouldn't we talk more about how human's insistence on consuming a ton of eggs is now harming this very thing? It's not worth it. You can buy all kinds of beans, peas or lentils by bulk for way cheaper on most parts of the planet, lasting you longer and filling you up more than an egg, if we're talking about protein sources. Because US Americans still want their eggs, the USDA invests up to $1 billion to combat avian flu and reduce egg prices. Imagine what those could have gone to instead to actually address housing issues, food issues, children in poverty and more. Cool, now your egg prices are slightly lower, but 1 billion more is in the wallet of corporations destroying our planet as "damage control" for their damaged "property", while people still starve, are homeless or in heavy medical debt. It shouldn't even be a priority with how many issues there are! This is not about ensuring you access to eggs, this is about bailing out a dangerous and unethical industry with your tax money.

While this is not the source of these price increases, I think this could reflect the real prices if animal agriculture wasn't subsidized heavily and relying on modern slave labor and extremely small prisons for animals. I see so many omnivorous animal lovers who want better conditions for the animals and workers, but you best believe that would result in 12 dollar eggs or more. For meat, if every cow needed at least 10m² or something, and every worker was to make minimum wage at least and had rights you want for all other workers (let's say, 20-30 days PTO, unlimited sick days, like workers in unions/in Europe often tend to have), who do you think would have to pay for the massive increase in space needed to keep up with the meat demand, and the costs of employment? Of course it would be you, even if the state continues to jump in and help. The only reason why your animal products were ever affordable to you was intense state lobbying, state involvement, animal torture prisons, and slave labor.

Not only that, but the disease that's wiping out domestic birds and affecting cows and workers also threatens us all, with animal-human interaction being the greatest risk for future pandemics and the widespread use of antibiotics in animal agriculture contributing a big part to antibiotics resistance. Two strains, H5N1 and H7N9 show potential to cause a future pandemic because both have jumped to humans with relatively high case fatality rates.

We have seen all of this before, just 5 years ago. But sure, continue on, throw money and antibiotics and animal vaccines at it, let the workers suffer and die, let it escape containment and cause the deaths of the elderly and immunocompromised first before causing severe brain damage, ME/CFS and more in the more stable populations - for 5 minutes of egg taste in your mouth.

I am so tired of it, man. It just screams privilege and affluenza to prioritize the current rate of egg/meat/cheese production over lives globally for "easy protein" or whatever the excuse.

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Published 03 Mar, 2025

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