LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Faced with high prices and shortages of eggs, Nevada lawmakers are considering a bill that would temporarily suspend a 2021 law that demands only cage-free eggs be sold in the Silver State.
But, the sponsor of the bill says the avian flu and supply chain problems are to blame for the higher prices, not the law that was aimed at preventing animal cruelty. Nevada is one of 15 states nationwide that require only cage-free eggs be sold in stores.
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Assemblyman Howard Watts, D-Clark County, who was chair of the Assembly Natural Resources committee during the 2021 session, oversaw the passage of Assembly Bill 399. It went into effect in July 2022.
But an outbreak of the avian flu has caused millions of chickens to be euthanized, Watts says. Nevada retailers have had to buy eggs from farms farther and farther away, raising costs further.
As a result, Watts and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Clark County, introduced Assembly Bill 171, which would give the state's quarantine officer the authority to suspend the provisions of AB 399 for periods of up to 120 days "...during any ongoing event that negatively impacts the national supply chain for egg products or shell eggs." Those events include disease outbreak, the bill says.
"The bill we passed to have Nevada become a cage-free state is not the cause of higher prices,' Watts said on Monday. "We've seen prices rise across the country, whether states have cage free laws or not. We have neighboring states with varying laws and varying prices. So the main issue is the bird flu. I think 20 million egg-laying hens have died as a result of this bird flu epidemic over the last couple of years, and that's really reduced the supply of eggs."
Bryan Wachter, director of public and government affairs for the Retail Association of Nevada, said expanding the supply should help ease shortages and bring down prices.
"What we do know is that eggs that come from conventional chickens are typically lower in cost," Wachter said. "They trade lower in cost on the commodities market, and we have examples of that in our neighbors to Utah or Idaho, states that allow those conventional eggs in, they are sustaining that lower price point for their consumers."
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Under an amendment, the bill is expected to also allow Grade B eggs, which are those with cosmetic defects but that are still healthy to eat. The sale of Grade B eggs to the public is not allowed in Nevada currently, but they are sold for use in baking and for making salad dressings, for example.
Another factor: supply chains. After chickens are euthanized, it takes months for young chicks to grow to egg-laying maturity. And Nevada has had to buy eggs from far away, which adds energy and transportation cost to the retail price.
"I think we've learned over the last year that supply chains are very complicated things," Watts said. "So I think it [the cage-free law] was, and is, a good law, and that's why we want to make sure that it stays in place. At the same time, we never did contemplate that we would be in a situation where there'd be this massive outbreak, and so we just want to add in that flexibility where, when we're in kind of dire straits, that we can put a temporary pause on that and hopefully help keep the costs of eggs affordable for folks."
Wachter said that's a real concern, especially since public assistance programs are not adding to their budgets, forcing consumers to ration eggs or go without them entirely. AB 171, he said, would give cage-free producers a chance to catch up with demand.
"They've been really good at producing more of these [cage-free] eggs, but we have hit a plateau as more and more of these birds are having to be culled," Wachter said. "And so for us, this is temporary. It is enough time to be able to give those producers a chance to start producing again and to come back fully online. Our goal is to provide the lowest cost possible eggs to our consumers. We don't like having our shelves empty and we don't like forcing consumers to make consumer decisions that they otherwise wouldn't make because of these supply chain challenges."
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