December 16

12/16 - Last week, Michael’s Foods (the country’s largest liquid egg supplier) announced that it lost 4.5M egg layers in Iowa, or 12% of their total capacity, to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza or HPAI. Michael’s is still recovering from losing 5.7M birds (14% of total) in May 2024 and 4.2M birds (10% of total) in Dec 2023. While not much information is available yet, Michael’s has in the past put customers on allocation in similar situations, most recently in early 2023. In addition to foodservice - commercial bakeries, prepared food manufacturers, sauce and dressing (mayo) suppliers would be affected. In past HPAI outbreaks, shell eggs had to travel further (+freight) to reach customers in areas where local supplies were affected. In last week’s monthly “Commodity Update”, our focus article (written before the Michael’s news) summarized the rising threat of HPAI and its jump from birds to dairy cows to humans.