Eggs US – Price – Chart

Here in Ontario I'm buying eggs for $2.99 / dozen, or about $2.10 USD.

This isn't a boast or schadenfreude, but is an observation that the protected, stable industry (supply management), which itself yields smaller, less industrialized operations means that while bird flu is a problem, it's hitting smaller clusters rather than gigantic mega operations where gigantic numbers of birds get culled.

So while our eggs are more expensive at times, there are benefits.

It’s great for the industrial food processor or restaurant chain that has a consistent demand/menu for eggs.

But more meh for the consumer that’s more liquid/dynamic/reactive and can easily substitute ad hoc if something gets too expensive.

It’s an industrial subsidy at more than one level.

Consumer demand for eggs and milk is extremely consistent over the short term, and when the price explodes people just...pay more. Hence all of the mad rushes and bizarre hoarding behaviour for this perishable product across the US. People are just spending more of their income on eggs, and bizarrely might be buying even more than normal. Over decades people change habits but for something acute they just suck it up.

>It’s an industrial subsidy at more than one level.

It's food security. There have been times Canadians were almost convinced to eliminate it to pander to the US, but in the face of the idiocracy taking hold down South, and its boom-bust agricultural sector (one that yields enormous numbers of farmer suicides)...yeah, it isn't ever going anywhere.

If we wanted to be strategic about food security (and deem supply management to be the way to do it), we’d supply manage primary food energy like beans and oats. Oh, and crop inputs like fertilizer.

Meat/eggs/dairy mostly destroys food energy. I guess you could argue the set pricing ensures food security for the animal.

>we’d supply manage primary food energy like beans and oats

We have enormous amounts of these crops, are hyper-competitive in them and fully self-supplying, and moreso they're very quick to turn around: A single season can yield enormous stockpiles of beans and oats.

That isn't true for dairy farms, egg operations, and so on. These don't scale up nearly as quickly. If Canada allowed the unrestricted flow of US options in these industries, US booms and mass industrial operations would wipe out Canadian suppliers, leaving us hugely vulnerable.

Like in the near future we might have an entire collapse of trade between the countries (as some new nonsensical exercise of brinksmanship is pursued, with new and ridiculous demands). We could wipe out 100% of foods that the US sends to Canada and be...perfectly fine, including, thankfully, poultry, milk and eggs. There are a lot of countries where this sort of food security independence isn't true.

Recent events have amply proven how critical Canada's protection of these industries are, making it all the more ironic that they're such a target. For obvious reasons.

> That isn't true for dairy farms, egg operations, and so on

Because we don’t let them grow (and for some reason don’t believe in shelf-stable products).

Biggest dairy exporter on the planet is New Zealand, I’d be more worried about them than USA. But we could’ve been NZ. Supply management kneecaps your ag industry. Lost opportunity if you’re good at it, which Canada generally is.