Things are getting dire at the border. Contraband is being smuggled at an alarming rate. But it’s not the contraband you’re thinking of. Your mind probably went straight to Fentanyl, but no, it’s not an illicit substance.
It’s something you should be able to get at grocery stores with ease—eggs.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a report revealing that since October 2024, attempts to smuggle eggs across the US-Mexico border have increased by 36 percent, with one particular portion, near the San Diego-Tijuana border, spiking by as much as 158 percent.
Bird flu has led to the extermination of thousands of egg-laying chickens, reducing supply and spiking the prices of the exit your local grocer.
US Border Agents Are Seizing Way More Eggs Than Fentanyl Nowadays
When demand is high and supply is low, black markets and smuggling operations naturally rise to fill in the gap, leading to daring heists like one in early February, where 100,000 eggs totaling $40,000 were stolen from a distribution center in Pennsylvania.
And it’s not just eggs. As various catastrophes have rattled supply chains in recent years, people have turned to daring thievery and black markets to get high-end cheeses, too.
There’s some catastrophe looming on the horizon right now that will make some unsuspecting commonplace items wildly expensive, which will catch the eye of smugglers who have their eye on the market.
According to the report, since October border officers have seized 3,768 poultry-related products compared to only 352 fentanyl seizures across all US borders. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon. Egg prices are expected to rise by as much as 41.1 percent through 2025.
If you’re looking for someone to blame, you might want to put your political affiliations aside for a second because politics doesn’t have much to do with it. Those late-season hurricanes from the end of 2024 disrupted bird migratory patterns, diverting some birds carrying the virus into areas with chicken farms that they normally wouldn’t have visited.
But, if you’re just itching to blame some political entity for it, blame all of them for not doing enough about climate change, which is making hurricanes stronger and much more unpredictable.
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