Consumers Pay the Price for Bird Flu While Poultry Monopolies Reap Billions in Profits and Subsidies

Sabrina Novotny

For many working people, the price of everyday staples like eggs acts as a direct gauge of the economy. When prices begin to increase, they feel the squeeze long before economists declare a crisis. In the past year, egg prices have soared—jumping from $2.51 per dozen in late 2023 to $4.15 by December 2024. In some regions, prices have climbed over $10 per dozen. Monopoly media blames bird flu, portraying it as an unpredictable disaster. But these outbreaks aren’t random, they’re a direct consequence of industrial farming practices designed to maximize profit, even at the expense of the health and safety of workers and consumers.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has devastated poultry populations across the United States. As of January 2024, over 136 million birds had been affected across all 50 states. The standard response to an outbreak is to cull entire flocks—sometimes millions of birds at a single location—to prevent further spread. This has created massive supply shortages, contributing to price volatility in grocery stores.

Bird flu is not a new phenomenon. The outbreak began in 2022, yet egg prices have remained unstable, fluctuating with each new wave of infections. This raises the question: Why is the U.S. food system so fragile that a single outbreak can cause such extreme price hikes?

The rising cost of living is a direct consequence of the cyclical crisis of imperialist overproduction. Industrial agriculture, dominated by a handful of monopolies, operates on a model of maximizing output while minimizing costs. Factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), cram hundreds of thousands of birds into tight, unsanitary spaces, making disease outbreaks inevitable. Chickens, cows, and pigs are kept in conditions so filthy that routine antibiotic use is necessary to keep them alive. These conditions weaken the animals’ immune systems and create breeding grounds for new, more virulent pathogens.

When disease spreads, it is not small farmers or consumers who receive help—it is agribusiness giants. The USDA has paid out over $500 million in taxpayer money to poultry companies to compensate for losses from culling flocks. Companies like Jennie-O Turkey Store and Tyson Foods received tens of millions of dollars, despite reporting billions in profits last year.

Monopolies do not use these funds to increase workers’ wages or invest in safer working conditions. Instead, they reinvest the capital to maximize profits while cutting costs, resulting in work speed-ups, deteriorating working conditions, increased exploitation, and layoffs. While agribusiness monopolies realize more profits, consumers are forced to pay higher prices as the quality of food declines and workers are subjugated to worse conditions for less pay.

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