Eggs

Eggs are one of the most efficient and universal sources of animal protein, with world production of roughly 90 million tonnes a year, about 1.6 trillion eggs, almost all of them hen eggs. China alone produces well over a third of the world's eggs, a concentration no other animal-protein category matches. The defining feature of the market is its localness: shell eggs are fragile, perishable, and cheap relative to their bulk, so they barely travel, production sits close to consumption, and only a low-single-digit share of output crosses borders, mostly as processed egg products rather than fresh shell eggs.

The dominant price story of the 2020s is highly pathogenic avian influenza. From 2022 onward, recurring H5N1 outbreaks forced the culling of tens of millions of US laying hens, repeatedly slashing flock size and sending egg prices to record highs: US average retail eggs reached about $4.25 a dozen in late 2022 and roughly $5.90 a dozen in early 2025, with wholesale and cage-free prices spiking into the $7 to $8 range at the peaks. Layered on top are the cage-free transition (California's Proposition 12 and a wave of state laws), volatile corn and soybean-meal feed costs, and sharp seasonal demand around the winter holidays and Easter.

Eggs are the classic case of a famous old futures contract that no longer exists. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange traces its lineage to the Chicago Butter and Egg Board of 1898, and shell, then frozen and refrigerated, egg futures traded for decades, with "egg" literally in the exchange's name. As production consolidated into a few large, vertically integrated producers, led by Cal-Maine Foods, and year-round refrigeration flattened the old seasonal storage play, the cash market shifted to formula contracts indexed to private price quotes, the futures lost liquidity, and they were delisted. Today eggs are priced off the Urner Barry quotations (the long-standing private reporter, whose "Midwest Large" is the benchmark) and USDA market reports, with no liquid futures anywhere.

One quirk of eggs puzzles travelers: Americans keep eggs in the fridge, while most of the world stores them on an unrefrigerated shelf, and both are right because the two systems treat the egg differently. The United States washes and sanitizes eggs before sale, which scrubs off the shell's natural protective coating, the cuticle (or bloom), leaving the porous shell open to bacteria, so washed eggs must then be kept cold to stay safe. The European model does the opposite: it bans washing of retail eggs and instead vaccinates hens against salmonella (Britain's Lion mark is the famous scheme), so the cuticle stays intact and the egg is shelf-stable at room temperature for a couple of weeks. EU rules even discourage chilling eggs in shops, on the logic that a cold egg moved into a warm kitchen sweats condensation that can draw bacteria through the shell. It is the same product under two opposite food-safety philosophies: wash-and-refrigerate versus vaccinate-and-leave-out.

One more question worth answering: why the hen won, when ducks, turkeys, and geese all lay perfectly good eggs. Mostly it is arithmetic. A modern laying hen produces 250 to 320 eggs a year. A duck manages 125 to 175, though specialised layer breeds approach the hen. A turkey lays 70 to 100. A goose lays 30 to 50, so it produces in a year roughly what a hen produces in six weeks. Then seasonality compounds it: geese and turkeys are photoperiod-driven spring layers, and you cannot build a year-round graded supply chain on a bird that lays for two months. The hen was bred out of that trap over centuries, which is the real achievement here, since wild junglefowl laid only 10 to 15 eggs a year in a short spring season. Two more forces finish the argument. Opportunity cost: a turkey egg is worth far more as a poult that grows into a large meat bird than as a breakfast egg, so even the eggs that exist rarely reach a table. And feed and space: a bigger bird eats more and needs more room to lay fewer eggs, so the cost per egg is far higher. The hen is simply the most efficient converter of feed into egg that exists.

That said, the premise is Western. Duck eggs are a major food across Asia, running 10 to 30 percent of egg consumption in China and Southeast Asia, and China produces close to 80 percent of the world's duck eggs. They mostly arrive as distinct products rather than as a substitute for a boiled egg: salted duck eggs, the preserved century egg, and balut in the Philippines. Duck eggs are richer and higher in fat, with a thicker shell that stores longer, which is exactly what suits preserving and baking. So the picture is regional rather than universal: the industrialised hen won the Western table, while in Asia the duck kept a real market of its own. For the birds themselves, see the Turkey, Duck & Goose sheet.