The US egg market has turned its mid-September floor into a recovery. USDA national wholesale prices for caged white large eggs rose 30.6% between 16 and 30 September. Cooler weather is bringing back home cooking, baking and breakfast, retail promotions have finally picked up, and Mexico and Cuba are active buyers absorbing volume. The rise started from very low levels, so prices are still well below a year ago, but the market is now being bid up by demand rather than just holding.
The recovery is narrow so far. Extra large, large and medium moved up in the week to 25 September, the first real gains since the July peak, while cage-free white and brown eggs were unchanged. Supply is ample: the laying flock on 1 September was 5% larger than a year earlier, which limits the upside. Avian influenza is the risk that could change that quickly. APHIS logged eight new outbreaks in one week, six of them in Minnesota and mostly at commercial turkey sites, bringing the 30-day total to 20 flocks. No commercial table-egg layer detection was found in that window.
Europe has paused rather than reversed. Over the two weeks to 1 October, retail caged eggs rose 2.48%, free range 2.78% and organic 0.50%. Gains have narrowed in Germany, the Netherlands and the EU average as the trade waits for October restocking. Whole egg liquid was the biggest mover among derivatives, up 6.99%.
Imports are capping the caged and industrial end of the European market. Extra-EU egg imports in the first half of 2026 were more than four-fifths higher than a year earlier, with Ukraine the largest supplier and Turkey moving from almost nothing to second place. Neither source eases the shortage of free-range and organic eggs in Western Europe, and France remains the tightest market, with packing stations still short of barn and free-range eggs.
Vesper’s outlook is for European prices to rise gradually, led by organic and free range, while caged and processing eggs stay steadier on import supply. In the US, the market should keep firming modestly into the fourth quarter. The full analysis covers the feed cost picture and what processors are doing ahead of winter.
