What the egg crisis reveals about our food system

This isn't the first time the price of eggs has skyrocketed. During the mid-19th-century gold rush, San Francisco's population ballooned from around 800 to more than 20,000, creating a scarcity of chicken eggs that hiked their price to nearly $1 per egg—the equivalent of $30 per egg today. This increased demand for another type of egg: that of the murre, a seabird inhabiting the nearby Farallones Islands. Poachers flocked to the islands and boats transporting eggs were hijacked, resulting in an "egg war" that endured for 30 years.