In response to a national egg supply crisis, precipitated by a devastating outbreak of bird flu, grocery store chains Trader Joe's, Costco, and Sprouts are setting restrictions on egg purchases. CBS News Los Angeles reported that Trader Joe's customers are now limited to buying no more than one dozen eggs per day. The decision aims to "ensure that as many of our customers who need eggs are able to purchase them when they visit Trader Joe's."

This policy mirrors constraints seen at other retailers – notably, Sprouts has signaled a four dozen per visit limit with in-store signage, and Costco has implied potential shortages or delivery omissions on its website; also, online shoppers at Costco.com face a cap at five orders according to information retrieved from the Good Morning America coverage of the story. Social media platforms have become repositories for customer frustrations as images proliferate, depicting barren refrigerators in stores emptier than a tree in midwinter, and lengthy lines in locations such as Los Angeles, showcasing consumers' rush to stockpile what few eggs remain available.

Furthermore, highly charged scenes have descended upon retail outlets with hoarders amassing dozens upon dozens of egg cartons in moves that would boggle the mind, the frantic activity captured and spread rapidly on social media platforms. "Eggs are the new bitcoin," joked one customer, amidst a backdrop of deplete shelves, in a post noted by the New York Post. The resulting disarray and the paucity of eggs have spurred these retailers to enforce purchase limits, Trader Joe's pronouncing that, "Due to ongoing issues with the supply of eggs, we are currently limiting egg purchases to one dozen per customer, per day, in all Trader Joe’s stores across the country," as per their spokesperson's.

Behind this turmoil is the severe decimation of egg-laying chicken populations by the H5N1 avian flu, with casualties exceeding 20 million in the last quarter according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the figure has climbed disturbingly above 150 million poultry birds if taking into account measures to combat the viral spread, delineating the scope of this disaster that has significantly hit egg supplies and shot prices upward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the average dozen Grade A large eggs went for $4.15 in December, up from $2.51 the previous year.