The Bird Flu outbreak in the upper Midwest has now made its way south to the Lone Star State—at least indirectly .
San Antonio-based Taco Cabana upped it price on Monday for egg-based breakfast tacos, between 20 and 40 cents per item.
The company’s chief operating officer, Todd Coerver, said in an e-mail to the San Antonio Express-News that the price increases will be temporary, but the egg market remains too volatile to say how long the increases will last. The company has added a new egg supplier to stabilize its supply.
His statement continued: “As soon as we receive any relief on pricing from our egg suppliers, we will pass that relief on to our guests.”
Taco Cabana isn’t the only breakfast-taco joint impacted by the egg shortage caused by an avian flu outbreak that hit the Midwest in April.
The egg shortage also has led large local companies to change their policies. Earlier this month, Whataburger cut its breakfast hours while it searched for new sources of eggs. Within a week, Whataburger brought all of it’s dishes back to the normal and long-standing breakfast schedule after tinkering with its egg supply chain.
H-E-B, the San Antonio-based grocer, continues to limit customers to three cartons of eggs to discourage commercial egg purchases.
Consumers still call the egg prices stratospheric because of the shortage. But prices have declined over the past two weeks.
The Avian Flu hit in April. The USDA reports that as many as 40 million chickens have been destroyed to stop the outbreak. Just last week another outbreak hit, this time in Wright County, Iowa. It affected a million chickens. Because of the egg crisis, the USDA lowered its forecast for table egg production this year to 6.9 billion dozen, a 5.3 percent drop from 2014.
Rob Milford is a news contributor to Breitbart Texas. He can be followed on Facebook.
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