At the height of egg inflation last year, I put an $8-a-dozen package on the belt in the checkout line. A bagger set it atop my groceries in the buggy and as soon as I started pushing it toward the door, the precious cargo fell on the floor and turned into a gooey scrambled wet cleanup. All the customers and staff members nearby froze, then gasped in horror.
It was an omen.
In the U.S. in 2024, the humble egg would become more powerful than Elon Musk.
Sure, it was a free and fair election, but the incredible edible egg surreptitiously washed the brains of voters far and wide. It was the propaganda equivalent of the weapons-of-mass-destruction myth that led to the war in Iraq. Or the fraudulent study that erroneously linked vaccines to autism.
It was deceptively, flamboyantly effective.
It didn’t matter that the primary reason egg prices spiked was something utterly apolitical: bird flu.
Avian influenza began spreading among wild birds in 2021, moving into the domestic flocks and reducing commercial egg-laying capacity drastically. Fewer chickens meant fewer eggs, and in our free-market economy, fewer eggs meant higher prices.
It also didn’t matter that the volatile egg prices came down over the course of 2024 to something like normal average prices in September and October. Voters were being egged on in their anxiety over high prices by relentless campaign messaging.
As Election Day neared, egg prices had come to symbolize the widespread feelings of helplessness and frustration among voters in the face of worldwide inflation.
Kamala Harris and the Democrats were toast.
And then after all the votes were counted, Trump admitted he could do very little to lower grocery prices, leaving us all with egg on our faces for being so gullible.
Meanwhile in Colorado, legislators appear totally henpecked. But it isn’t entirely their fault.
As of Jan. 1, only cage-free eggs may be sold in the state — further evidence of the egg’s political clout even in the face of legitimate concerns about potential increased costs.
The Colorado legislature passed the bill mandating cage-free eggs in 2020 to forestall a ballot measure calling for much more stringent regulations on egg, beef and pork producers.
World Animal Protection, a New York-based animal welfare organization, was mobilizing to run cage-free ballot measures in Colorado and in several states across the country. Voters in California and Massachusetts already had approved similar measures overwhelmingly, and polls in Colorado indicated strong support if the measure hit the ballot.
The whole idea did not exactly hatch out of nowhere. It was an acknowledgement of a trend that already was well on its way to becoming the norm in the industry.
Most of us have seen the videos showing the inhumane and disgusting conditions inside industrial egg-producing facilities with birds unable to move in tight spaces and standing in rivers of feces. Even hard-boiled consumers wanted nothing to do with that.
We weren’t about to sell our souls for cheap omelets.
Increasingly we were demanding cage-free or free-range eggs and retailers from Kroger and Safeway to Starbucks were moving toward selling those exclusively.
The more modest legislation passed here requires that hens be raised in cage-free barns, but it gave producers three more years to remodel their hen houses to comply in an attempt to mitigate the economic impact on farmers — and the rest of us.
☀ MORE IN OPINION
And while the new facilities give the hens more space and allow them to move about inside the barns, the girls are not exactly living the life of free birds, pecking the ground outside in the sunshine.
In fact, a lot of producers brag about feeding the hens exclusively vegetarian diets, something that’s not on a typical bird menu that prominently features juicy grubs and squirming maggots full of protein.
After all, backyard chickens and the ones raised on family farms get their distinctive yellow-orange yolks and high Omega-3s from eating bugs along with their feed. Commercial producers often spike the chicken feed with marigold flowers, beets or turmeric to produce eggs with neon orange yolks to mimic those of the free-range birds.
It’s just another way the eggs are messing with us.
Scramble some of those glowing orange yolks and you’ll think somebody put ketchup in the eggs when you weren’t looking. Eewww.
They’re, well, weird. They look like nothing in nature. Not exactly fake, but strange.
Look closely and you’ll see they’re almost exactly the same color as the president-elect’s hair.
Coincidence? You decide.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.