Walmart and Kentucky Legacy respond to TikTok showing incorrectly priced meat
USA TODAY spoke to Jimmy Rigg, a TikToker whose video of him getting the wrong price for meat at a store has been viewed millions of times.
At least for now, egg prices this year are very different from last year.
In January and February of 2025, grocery shoppers were paying escalating costs as they scrambled to find eggs on empty shelves. Additionally, restaurant patrons will be charged a surcharge for eggs as the industry deals with the worst year of bird flu outbreaks.
Although the threat of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), or avian influenza, remains high, the egg industry is currently oversupplied, with wholesale egg prices at record lows in early January, egg farmers and industry officials told USA TODAY. Egg farmers currently sell their products for less than the cost of production.
“There’s never been a better time to buy eggs,” said Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board..
What happened to the price of eggs last year?
What happened to the egg industry and egg prices is classic supply and demand. Last year, when a large portion of the U.S. egg supply was affected by avian influenza during a period of seasonal demand, shoppers became concerned and began buying too many eggs, Thompson said. And prices have soared.
But over the past seven months, wholesale prices have fallen nearly 90%, reaching historic lows in early January, Metz said. According to the USDA egg market overview on January 9, the wholesale price of 12 large eggs hit a record low of 36 cents per dozen.
Matt Sutton-Vermeulen, Kearney’s principal for agriculture and food, told USA TODAY that the price of eggs on the wholesale market has increased since the loss of 4.5 million chickens to avian influenza in January and February.
The Feb. 6 USDA Egg Market Overview Report lists 12 large eggs at a wholesale price of $1.25.
Are grocery store prices going down?
Sutton-Vermeulen said grocery store prices have fallen, but not as dramatically as wholesale prices.
Retailers often fulfill contracts with suppliers on a quarterly or semi-annual basis, he told USA TODAY. Additionally, retailers may delay raising or lowering prices if the market spikes or softens, he said.
Comparing the retail price of eggs in December 2025 and December 2024, the most recent price information available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI), the average price of 12 Grade A eggs in the United States was $2.72 in December 2025, compared to $4.15 in December 2024. The highest CPI price for eggs was $6.23 in March 2025.
Prices remained high in April and May, but began to decline in June 2025. The latest CPI information for January will be released on February 13th.
Egg prices have been on a roller coaster since mid-2022, peaking in the winters of 2023 and 2025 and rising more than 150% above pre-pandemic prices in January, according to USA TODAY’s Grocery Tracker based on data from Datasembly. Since then, prices have calmed down. Nationwide, prices in the first week of February fell by 37% compared to the same week last year, but still remain about 47% higher than in February 2020.
Some Walmart shoppers may have already seen egg prices drop at local stores, according to USA TODAY’s Shopping Cart Tracker provided by data-scraping firm BrightData. Track real-time prices collected weekly from at least one Walmart online marketplace in each state. Data shows egg prices have fallen in several states since USA TODAY began its research in late October.
For example, egg prices in New Jersey fell from $6.54 to $2.96 per dozen at Walmart stores last week. In Chicago, prices fell from $3.46 to $2.96.
Is avian influenza still a threat to the U.S. egg supply?
The H5N1 avian influenza strain began in the fall of 2020 in poultry flocks and wild birds in Europe and has since spread to the United States, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, making it the largest outbreak of its kind in the United States.
According to Metz, between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, the U.S. egg industry lost 50 million laying hens to avian influenza.
Metz said it could take nine months to more than a year for egg farms to recover from detection of chicken flu and return to full production.
But “it’s not the same situation this year,” Metz told USA TODAY, adding that while bird flu is still present, it’s not as severe.
Will the price go back up?
Thompson said no one can predict what prices will be because bird flu is unpredictable.
“Next month, millions of birds could disappear from the system and this whole issue could turn around again,” she says.
Additionally, Thompson said that while it’s good for consumers that the price of eggs is lower than the cost of production, it could make some farms unviable, which could impact retail prices. “Nobody signs up to lose money,” Thompson told USA TODAY, referring to egg farmers.
The first bird flu in the United States hit a flock of egg farmers.
Mike Paglisi said the egg farming industry always has periods of highs and lows, but nothing on the scale of avian influenza over the past five years. His family is the third generation to operate Paglisi Egg Farms, which have two locations in New Jersey and Delaware.
The last year has been especially tough, he told USA TODAY, as the industry has lost so many birds, creating a “disaster” and huge shortages that have caused prices to go “crazy.”
He said February 2022 was even worse for him personally, when his farm became the first commercial egg farm in the U.S. to become infected with the latest strain of HPAI avian influenza and lose its entire flock.
Currently, there are more eggs than people need and prices are below the cost of production, Paglisi said.
We won’t be dyeing Easter potatoes this year.
Last year, egg prices were so high that consumers turned to alternatives such as dyeing potatoes instead of eggs for Easter.
“Easter is coming up. It’s the Super Bowl,” Mets said. “No one should be worried about dyeing potatoes this year. We’ll be dyeing eggs and an additional dozen.”
contribution: Data journalists Suhail Bhat and Dian Zhang
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Contact her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her at @blinfisher on X, Facebook and Instagram and @blinfisher.bsky.social on Bluesky.. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, breaking down complex consumer and financial news. Subscribe here.
