Grand Theft Egg

 

by Pa Rock

Former Chicken Rancher

(Warning:  This is a Ramble that rambles.)

Eggs have been in the news for the past couple of months, ever since candidate Trump raised a stink over the price of eggs during the campaign.   The man who has probably never entered a grocery store in his entire life blamed a rise in egg prices on Biden, or Obama, or maybe even Hillary, I'm not sure, but I do remember that he never mentioned the real cause:  bird flu.    A pandemic wrecked his first presidency, and he will be damned if another one is allowed to root its way into his second occupation of the White House.  If Trump and his people can ignore it, bird flu won't be real.  Problem solved.

But here we are almost three weeks into the new Trump administration and the price of eggs is still going up.  I gave $4.79 for a dozen eggs two weeks ago, and now I understand that they are over seven dollars in many locations.  Waffle House announced this week that they are charging customers an extra fifty cents per egg on every order, and when I stopped by the local Sonic yesterday for a road breakfast, my bacon and egg sandwich was fifty cents more than it had been a couple of weeks earlier.

Ten years ago I had a few dozen hens and was giving eggs away as fast as I could get them gathered.   If I had laying hens today, I would have to put an alarm system on the coop and hire a night watchman!

And speaking of stealing eggs . . . 

Last Saturday evening 100,000 organic eggs were stolen from the back of a distribution truck at Pete and Gerry's Organics in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, a haul worth $40,000.  Police scrambled to solve the crime, but so far they haven't been able to crack the case.  (There were puns aplenty across social media regarding the heist, though it is impossible to say eggsactly how many.)

How does a person fence a hundred thousand eggs?  Perhaps they are headed to a political rally instead of breakfast tables.

And speaking of breakfast . . . 

Six million pounds of maple syrup worth $18 million was stolen from a warehouse in Quebec in 2011.  It took five years for Canadian authorities to solve that sticky situation, but solve it they did, and the ringleader was sentenced to eight years in prison - where he will presumably get three meals a day, including breakfast.  French Quebec is not the place to go screwing around with someone's French toast!

Thieves used to focus on high-end items like guns, electronics, jewelry, booze, and drugs, but now that groceries are becoming increasingly expensive, food has also become a target for criminals.  The government is taking aim at school meals for hungry kids and homebound seniors, while other thieves are apparently targeting breakfast, the most important meal of the day.

Food should not be a target of crime, nor a weapon to control the population.  Food is a primary necessity of life.  It should be safeguarded with the same level of ferocity and determination as we use to protect politicians, banks, insurance companies, and other bottom-feeders, and it should be provided on an equitable and fair basis to everyone.  

Support school meals for every child, food banks, food drives, Meals on Wheels, charitable organizations that fight hunger, independent farmers, and all programs to end hunger.  The planet can sustain us all - if we let it.