Reference
Glossary
The terms the brief uses, defined the way the shell-egg trade says them.
- Shell egg
- A whole egg sold in the shell, as distinct from breaking stock (eggs sent to be broken into liquid, dried, or frozen egg product). This site reports the shell egg market. Breaking stock and egg products are a separate, upstream market.
- Loose vs cartoned
- Two wholesale forms. Loose eggs move on flats in a 30-dozen case, the form the wholesale market quotes and the form the national benchmark price is. Cartoned eggs are packed in retail cartons (a dozen, 18-count, and so on) and carry a higher price for the packing. A price is always paired with its form.
- Large white benchmark
- The USDA national 5-day weighted average price for large, white, loose shell eggs, in cents per dozen. It is the single number the shell-egg trade quotes as the market reference. Large is the reference size because it is the highest-volume grade.
- Cents per dozen
- The unit every wholesale egg price on this site is quoted in, exactly as USDA publishes it. A price of 150 cents per dozen is $1.50 a dozen at wholesale. Retail carton prices are quoted per carton in dollars instead.
- Cage-free vs conventional
- Two production methods. Conventional (caged) hens are housed in cages; cage-free hens are not. Cage-free costs more to produce, so it trades at a premium. USDA also reports free-range, pasture-raised and organic as further steps up. This site treats caged as the conventional base and measures every premium against it.
- Cage-free premium
- The gap between the cage-free price and the conventional price for the same size and color. It is structural, widening over time as state mandates and retailer commitments move demand to cage-free, but it swings: a shock that lifts conventional prices compresses the premium, which re-widens as conventional eases.
- Delivery basis
- Where in the chain a wholesale price is quoted. Paid to Producers FOB is the farm gate. Delivered Warehouse is at the distribution center, the reference basis for regional prices. Delivered Store Door is at the store. The same egg carries a higher price the further down the chain it is quoted.
- Shell egg inventory
- The stock of graded shell eggs on hand, reported weekly by USDA in thousands of 30-dozen cases. It is the supply gauge behind the price. Inventory below its normal for the week signals a tight market.
- HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza)
- Bird flu. When a commercial layer flock is confirmed infected, the whole flock is depopulated, so one detection can remove millions of hens from supply within days, and recovery takes months. HPAI is the supply shock behind the biggest egg-price moves. This site tracks USDA APHIS confirmed detections in commercial layer flocks.
- Grade A vs AA
- USDA quality grades based on the condition of the white and yolk. Grade AA is the highest; Grade A is the retail standard. Grade is distinct from size (large, medium) and from color (white, brown).
- Retail feature activity
- USDA's weekly tracking of which eggs grocery stores are advertising, at what price, and in how many stores. It is a demand-side signal: heavy featuring pulls eggs off the shelf. This site reports feature intensity as context, not as a wholesale price.
- Urner Barry
- The long-established private egg-price service the institutional trade pays for. This site is the free, public-data layer beneath that paid tier: it reports USDA's own published numbers, plainly, and does not reproduce any private index.