Hospital reconsidering its menus because of egg-sourcing issues

The avian flu epidemic has had a massive impact on the Yankton area and Midwest as a whole during the last few months. As poultry populations continue to be wiped out — thousands or millions per farm — in order to contain the virus, the consumer market is now beginning to see the effects with some entities beginning to take proactive measures to help keep costs down.

Avera Sacred Heart Hospital (ASHH), for instance, has started looking at the egg products on its cafeteria menu.

Doralynne Jarvis, director of the ASHH nutrition services department, told the Press & Dakotan, that their current food supplier has been keeping an eye on the situation and taking its own precautions.

"Through our food supplier, our eggs have been under allocation going into the third week," Jarvis said. "What that means is, they’re closely watching their purchasers for what they’re purchasing for eggs and egg products and the quantity. If you have not purchased a certain egg product within the past six months, they’re not allowing us to purchase it due to the limited supply. Our food supplier is not taking on any new customers at this point for eggs and egg products. And since the eggs are under allocation, there is not a guarantee that when we order eggs on our food truck that we will receive eggs on our food truck."

Jarvis said, at this time, the hospital is still getting its eggs.

"So far, we have received eggs as we have ordered them," she said. "We have not been shorted to this point, but the supply is much more limited than it used to be."

Dr. David Zeman of the South Dakota Poultry Industry Association told the Press & Dakotan that while a lot of egg producers have been impacted nationwide, most of the industry is still working normally.

"Roughly 10 percent of the layers in the U.S. are impacted by the disease," Zeman said. "So we still have 90 percent of the supply chain still intact."

However, he added, the number is much higher at the state level due to the low number of chicken operations.

"In South Dakota, we only have two large operations," he said. "Of course, one of them is impacted so that’s about half of our production impacted in South Dakota."

Zeman said each operation used about 1.2 million chickens each and that it will take several months to restore capacity.

Despite the vast majority of producers still operating normally, prices for eggs have been climbing. In its June "World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates" release, the USDA lowered projections for egg supplies this year and in 2016 due to the avian influenza outbreak, and forecast a dozen eggs wholesale cost would be between $1.60-$1.66 nationwide — up 30 cents from May projections. CNN also reported Wednesday that in some places in the Midwest, a dozen eggs has climbed from $1.19 to $2.62.