Eggheads 🍳

we all need to get smarter about our food and fast

Most Americans are painfully ignorant about where their food comes from and what goes into it. It’s not for a lack of available information; it’s a lack of curiosity. We could look into the systems that keep our dairy, meat, and eggs prices artificially low but most of us can’t stomach it. People tell me all the time that they “make sure to buy meat from places where they treat the animals well” but that’s just not possible. 99% of meat and animal products in the US come from factory farms so either you’re lying to me or you’re lying to yourself. Take your pick. The truth is people just don’t care about their food as long as it’s familiar, tastes good, and they can afford it. We treat meat, eggs, and produce like goods that just appear at the store or on our plates without considering what it takes to get them grown. But not any longer. Climate collapse, diseases, dumb fuck tariffs, mass deportations, and corporate greed are causing our food system to change rapidly with skyrocketing prices and increasingly empty shelves. The American people need to get more knowledgeable to be able to ride this shitty wave. First up, eggs.

My local market last week

I won’t get into the stupid conversation about political parties controlling the price of eggs but I will say that I can’t believe how hard it is for people to see the connection between the price of eggs and H5N1, aka bird flu. Since this strain was first discovered in the US in 2022, over 150 million birds have been killed. 20 million of those were just last quarter alone. When an infected bird is discovered, it is federal policy that the whole flock has to be killed to avoid spreading the disease, which makes sense. It’s zombie rules. But because we’ve been keeping our chickens in horrible conditions on giant factory farms, this means a lot of chickens have to die at once. We knew this would happen one day. An outbreak of some kind of zoonotic disease that would decimate our factory farms has been forecast by scientists for decades because of the unsanitary and cruel conditions we keep the animals in, but the checks were still clearing so why change? This system was never meant to last, it was meant to extract profit until there was no profit to be made.

For example, bird flu was discovered in hens on Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch last year, one of the country’s largest egg producers, and thus they had to kill 6.5 million birds very, very quickly. To encourage farmers to follow the rules and kill their flocks, the USDA has a program that pays producers for the birds and eggs they destroy. Yup, that means that taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill for all these dead birds. So much for facing the consequences of your own irresponsible actions, huh?

Of course this shit is a problem 📸 New Roots Institute

Poultry and egg producers could inoculate their flocks against the virus. We’ve had vaccines for bird flu for years and many countries like France, Hong Kong, and Mexico use them in addition to other safety measures. So why aren’t we doing it too? Trade concerns, of course. The US exports about $5 billion of poultry meat and products every year and many of our trade agreements do not allow for bird flu vaccination. So instead of losing some money or renegotiating contracts, we’re letting the virus continue to explode while it jumps from birds to cattle and now into other mammals, like cats and 68 people. Very cool and not at all shortsighted. Chickens in the US already regularly receive a whole host of vaccines (don’t tell MAHA) so it’s not like the industry couldn’t handle implementing another. They just currently have no financial incentive to do so.

Our fucked-up food system has hidden the cost of all these animal products from us in plain sight through government subsidies and horrors of factory farming. Yes, egg prices have skyrocketed in recent years because of millions of birds we’ve killed because of H5N1 but damn, they were artificially low to begin with. If you ever let yourself think about it for more than a second, you knew it too. Eggs come from chickens that can, at most, lay one egg a day. These chickens need to eat and have access to clean water. Their food is primarily corn and soybeans which in turn needed land, water, and fertilizers to grow and had to be harvested, processed, and shipped to the factory farms. That’s a whole lot of work and money for $.30 an egg. The math is simply not mathing.

me trying to figure out how much eggs should really cost in the store. $25?

We need to do better. In order to get through all of the bullshit that is coming to our food system in the next couple of years, we need to understand the true cost of our food and where it comes from. That information will help us make better, and ultimately more affordable, choices when it comes to feeding ourselves. Lots of products that are considered staples like eggs, bananas, milk, and meat are going to have to shift to luxury goods because that’s where they should have been all along. What we pay at the checkout when compared with the toll these goods are taking on our environment and public health is just not good enough. We need to eat more beans and legumes. We need to eat seasonally. Eggs need to be something you get locally and infrequently, same with meat and dairy. Climate collapse is already changing everything from the availability of olive oil, chocolate, and so much more. It’s time we stay nimble on our feet and lock down the staple goods we most enjoy eating that will get us through these hard times. I’m a big believer in beans and rice. I don’t know if H5N1 will be our next big pandemic or not, but I do know that we can’t keep putting our heads in the sand. All of our diets need to reflect reality, not just our dietary preferences. Wake up and smell the coffee babe, while we still have it.

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  Michelle