Earlier this week, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), through its Livestock, Poultry, and Grain Market News (LPGMN) Division, published a new report adding transparency to the cage-free shell egg market. This new monthly report includes wholesale price information for cage-free shell eggs traded on a contract basis and negotiated spot market basis.
In addition, the report includes retail feature price information for extra-large and large sized cage-free shell eggs, and information for both brown and white eggs. This information is collected from weekly retail advertised specials from over 29,000 retail stores across the country.
This report also provides information on cage-free shell egg estimated production in the United States, based off of organic and cage-free flock size estimates collected by LPGMN. These flock size estimates are coupled with estimated egg laying rates from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to calculate the current estimated weekly production of both organic and non-organic cage-free eggs.
This new monthly report will be released on the first Monday of each month, and can be found on our website by clicking on “Eggs.” The link for the report is under the “Shell Eggs – Other” heading. You can access the report directly at www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/pymcagefree.pdf.
Livestock, Poultry, and Seed Program