Why tf is chicken so expensive?🐓

A deep dive into why my favorite ✨formerly✨ affordable protein source now costs and arm and a leg.

In an effort to provide more quality content to my loyal subscribers 💕, I want to add a current events/pop-culture/food reporting element to my page in addition to weekly recipes. Starting this week I’ll be sending out a weekly column in collaboration with my newest employee, Ila Kumar, that brings you the latest and greatest to your mailbox every Wednesday. Starting with a matter that’s been weighing heavily on my mind and wallet: why tf is chicken so expensive??

If you’ve been following my recipes for a while—or anyone else’s recipes, or, for that matter, if you have ever browsed any recipe book or website—you may have caught onto the simple fact that people love to cook and eat chicken. My three most popular recipes all have chicken in them, including a SubStack favorite—the Sundried Tomato DBS. Of the fifty-two recipes named the most popular in 2023 on the NYT Cooking website, fifteen are chicken dishes, while beef, shrimp, and pork appear in only one or two recipes. Forbes has reported that chicken is America's “number one meat,” with Americans eating twice as much of it than pork or beef. 

If you’re one of the many Americans looking to cut back on grocery expenses you may have chosen to forego steak in favor of cheaper chicken. Chicken sales increased 60% from 2021-2022, according to the USDA so clearly you weren’t alone. But frankly, I have been shocked by recent chicken prices. WHY TF IS A POUND OF GROUND CHICKEN $13? This is not the so-called affordable protein alternative I know and love. So let’s break down some of the factors that may be contributing to rising chicken prices

It’s easy to chalk rising prices up to inflation, but what does that even mean, and is that what’s happening here? Inflation feels like something a Murray Hill finance bro would say to you when you ask him a question and he doesn’t know the answer. According to Forbes and the USDA, the “worst case of avian flu in almost 10 years” caused egg prices to jump 267% higher than at the beginning of the year. The bird flu affected nearly “58 million poultry birds through the start of 2023.” (Poultry birds are breeds of chicken used for meat production, as opposed to laying hens which are used for egg production.) The cost of a whole chicken rose 14.8%, from $1.62 per pound in January 2022, to $1.86 per pound in the same month in 2023. Simply put: a lot of chickens got sick and died. With demand for chicken remaining relatively stable, a decrease in supply will cause prices to rise. 

In addition to being hit with the Avian Flu Epidemic, according to TastingTable, “labor shortages, fuel costs, the war in Ukraine has created a unique problem for Europe's meat producers since the cost of feed has been directly impacted by the conflict.” As The Guardian noted, common chicken feed ingredients include sunflower oil and wheat—both of which are Russian and Ukrainian exports. Basically, the conflict in Ukraine may be causing resources to be put towards war efforts instead of exporting chicken feed ingredients. This may be affecting American chicken food prices which is likely influencing chicken production costs to rise and causing chicken to be more expensive.

So why TF is chicken so expensive?? Maybe a little bit of inflation but also Avian flu caused a lot of chickens to get sick and die and the country that exports a lot of chicken food is at war.

I hope you enjoyed and as always feel free to comment any topics or suggestions you have for this column going forward!