If you've noticed bare shelves in your supermarket and "TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK" signs where you'd normally find several brands of eggs, you're not the only one.
Some grocery stores in Massachusetts are struggling to keep eggs on the shelves in time for the holidays. For instance, signs on the shelves in the refrigerator section at the Big Y in Ludlow apologized that some egg brands were out of stock "due to national supply shortages."
While egg shortages are not unheard of around the holidays given the spike in festive baking, this year is hit particularly hard as farmers nationwide battle another spike: bird flu.
For more than two years, Avian influenza A (H5N1) has wreaked havoc on the U.S. egg supply.
Between January 2022 and November 2024, 1,200 bird flu outbreaks were identified across 48 states, according to a Wildlife Management Institute report.
At one point, the shortage prompted egg products to skyrocket to nearly $5 a carton.
Bird flu, formally known as Avian influenza, originates in wild aquatic birds and lives in intestinal and respiratory tracts.
It is very contagious among birds and can sicken and kill certain domesticated bird species, including chickens, ducks and turkeys, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The recent outbreaks have affected more than 100 million birds, including commercial poultry stock and backyard flocks, forcing farmers in states like Utah to euthanize hundreds of thousands of birds, TODAY reports.
Flocks of egg-laying hens are smaller in 2024 than pre-2022 because producers haven't recovered from bird flu-related losses, animal protein economist Brian Earnest recently told NerdWallet.
"It seems like they can't get over this bird flu outbreak issue," Earnest said.
Massachusetts has also been battling with the ongoing bird flu outbreak since 2022.
At this time, Massachusetts has no confirmed cases of bird flu in cattle.
As for birds, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources have "depopulated and disposed of two non-commercial, mixed-species backyard flocks," earlier this year, as both tested positive for the bird flu.
The flocks were in Barnstable and Essex counties.
Another backyard flock was disposed of in Essex County in March, about a month after the first flocks were "depopulated."
The state wrapped up testing all dairy herds in September and found no cattle infected with bird flu at that time.
Massachusetts was the only state in the country to test all dairy herds at that time, according to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.
Earlier this week, California's governor declared a state of emergency as the Golden State's cattle population runs rampant with the virus.
The state confirmed 261 new cases of bird flu infected cattle within the last 30 days.
While the virus does not usually infect people, in cases where it has, symptoms range in severity from no side effects and mild illness to severe illness and death.
The CDC announced the first case of a severe illness linked to the virus in the U.S. earlier this week.
The illness was confirmed Dec. 13. The infection is in Louisiana.
While this is the first "severe" case in the U.S., as of Dec. 20, there have been 61 confirmed human infections in the U.S. since April.