Early edition of the article misstated the increase in the cost of eggs at the White House Easter egg roll in 2008 compared with 2007. The difference was $697.
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Cost of Eggs Leaves Consumers Clucking
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Sunnyside's 430,000 hens lay about 8 million dozen eggs a year, part-owner Donald Lippy said, describing the market as "way high."
"If that goes for a while, you make good money. You make real good money," Lippy said. "But then you go to the other side of it, and you give it back. It's another typical farming deal."
Prices have gone in cycles, with farmers sometimes unloading their eggs below cost. Such losses squeezed many out of business.
"It gets to be survival of the fittest," said Gabe Zepp, an agriculture official in Carroll, which produces 10.6 million dozen eggs. In 2005, Hibberd trimmed his flock from 160,000 to 4,000. "You couldn't justify operating it," Hibberd said.
Sunnyside's operation is the largest still standing in the county. In Hampstead, distributor Sauder's Eggs stays busy washing eggs and using glowing lights and ultrasound to check for cracks.
Many big U.S. producers made cuts for strategic reasons. Fewer eggs equals higher prices.
At the same time, most U.S. farmers, feeling pressure from animal welfare advocates at home and in Europe, have been voluntarily cutting the number of birds kept in a typical 24-inch by 20-inch cage.
Together, the cutbacks resulted in 5 million fewer hens nationally.
Feed costs are up, too, pushed by overseas demand for grains and corn-hungry ethanol producers. And bills are higher for the fluorescent henhouse lights and fuel.
But energy costs affect everybody, said Dave Harvey, a poultry and fish farming analyst for the U.S. Agriculture Department. "Eggs have gone up a lot more than most other things," he said. "It's a combination of lower supplies and high export demand -- those are the big things right there."
J¿rgen Fuchs, an international egg trader based outside Frankfurt, Germany, whose father started the business to fill shortages after World War II, watches world markets and relies on timing and connections to buy low and sell higher.
In January 2007, a dozen eggs were selling in U.S. stores for $1.55, cheaper wholesale. The eggs that Fuchs bought last year from U.S. producers went to diners in Hong Kong and the Middle East. That helped push up U.S. prices by taking eggs off the local market.
