The price of a dozen eggs has nearly doubled since last year and hit a record high in January. An outbreak of avian influenza in primarily to blame, experts said.

Chronic staff shortages have left the California lab struggling to protect the state’s food chain from bird flu, the workers said.

Three years into a nationwide avian influenza outbreak that has forced millions of egg-laying birds to be killed after becoming infected, Hilliker’s Ranch in Lakeside has been able to keep producing day in and day out with a little luck and a lot of effort around sanitation.

UC Davis Children’s Hospital in Sacramento has seen “five or 10 times more influenza (patients) than COVID (patients)” in 2025 alone, according to Dr. Dean Blumberg, the hospital’s chief of pediatric infectious diseases.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, has been detected on commercial farms in California and other parts of the U.S. The most recent outbreak of the highly transmissible strain of bird flu began in early 2022 and has resulted in the deaths of wild ...

Echoing results from earlier California investigations into H5N1 infections in domestic cats, an investigation by agriculture departments in Oregon and Washington has renewed warnings about feeding pets raw food after their investigation into two cat illnesses in Oregon found that the pets were exposed to the same raw pet food brand.

The CSIC-UNESPA scientific expedition has been underway since last January with the aim of monitoring the presence of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAI H5N1) in Antarctica. The first results of the campaign,