“I just happened to look back at an invoice from January of 2022, and we were selling eggs for $23 a case,” says Washtenaw Dairy owner Mary Jean Raab. “Yesterday I paid $83 a case.” Another supplier was asking $147.
The jump in prices followed state legislation that requires large egg producers to install “cage-free housing systems” that include “scratch areas, perches, nest boxes, and dust bathing areas.” Promoted by animal rights activists to eliminate confinement to tiny, individual cages, the law took effect on January 1.
The new system costs more because it “does take more labor and more space,” Wayne State nutritionist Diane Cress told Detroit TV station WDIV. At the same time, the spread of bird flu has curtailed the egg supply—the state’s largest producer had to kill more than six million laying hens last year to halt an outbreak.
Most locals fondly identify the ninety-year-old Dairy as a destination to enjoy doughnuts and coffee in cold weather and towering ice-cream cones in warm. But “half of our total business goes out the back door” to wholesale customers, Raab says—“a lot of our small restaurants … even coffee shops that have started making breakfast burritos and breakfast sandwiches.”
They also deliver eggs and dairy products to schools, day care centers, and nursing homes, and sell eggs by the carton to people in the neighborhood.
As her cost soared at the beginning of January, Raab says, she raised her price to $8.25 a dozen—but “couldn’t sleep at night,” so she lowered it two days later. After getting “very creative” in finding alternative suppliers, she was selling them in mid-month for $5.25 a dozen.
Customer gripes are minimal, Raab says, as they appear to get that it’s not the store’s fault. But the wholesale business “continues to be an absolute nightmare.” After January’s gyrations, she’s hoping prices will stabilize this month.
Related: GMA Donuts
Mary Jean Raab
Calls & Letters: Blame bird flu, not the cage-free law
“The prime factor is bird flu,” state senator Jeff Irwin said in a phone call, responding to our February article on soaring egg prices. We’d quoted Washtenaw Dairy owner Mary Jean Raab attributing some of the increase to the state’s cage-free egg law, which took effect in January.
“High egg prices are sweeping the nation and lower here,” Irwin wrote in a follow-up email, because Michigan “flocks have seen less impact” from the avian epidemic. In mid-February, the Associated Press reported that nationally, nearly 159 million domestic poultry have been slaughtered to curb bird flu outbreaks, “including nearly 47 million since the start of December.” It’s spreading in wild flocks as well—see It’s Bird Flu Season.
