Starting Thursday, distributors will be able to source eggs that are not cage free.
Nevada's cage free egg law is now temporarily lifted for the next 120 days.
The Nevada Department of Agriculture says that this is meant to help increase egg supply in the state.
One thing NDA does want to stress is this will not impact the health and food safety of the eggs. This just allows any egg producers to be sourced, but there are still strict regulations in place.
This is all in response to massive egg shortages and prices going up due to limited supply.
Cage free chickens are greatly impacted by a flu virus that is killing millions of them.
That is why Assembly Bill 171 was passed and signed by Governor Joe Lombardo to temporarily suspend the regulation.
"Currently around 38 percent of all eggs produced are cage free," said Tracy Shane, State Livestock Extension Specialist for the University of Nevada, Reno.
This leaves about 60 percent of additional eggs now open to the Nevada supply.
Essentially, cage free chickens are technically still raised in an enclosure of some kind, they are just required to have more room to roam around.
Nevada does not have a farm that can commercially sell eggs to restaurants or grocery stores.
So, when sourcing for cage free eggs, they have looked to neighboring states that have adopted similar cage free regulations like Colorado and California.
They can now look into other places across the country.
"We can go to more traditional places," said J.J. Goicoechea, State Quarantine Officer, Nevada Department of Agriculture. "Towards the midwest, southeast where they actually raise a lot of poultry in a caged environment, and we can source our eggs from there."
They can also source Grade B eggs as well, which most people could notice visually as they come in different shapes, colors, and sizes.
Goicoechea says that while they are opening it up to any egg producers, the eggs still must meet the food safety requirements that cage free eggs do.
He says we could see more eggs on the shelf in about two weeks, and then hopes the supply will meet the demand and prices will drop.
"While we may not see prices go down to four dollars a dozen or two dollars a dozen what we may not see is additional price increases," Shane said.
Governor Lombardo said in a statement last week that he would like to repeal former Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak's cage free law from 2021.
That would make sourcing from any egg producer legal with no time constraints.
"For us it's just to make sure that we have that source of protein," Goicochea said. "Whichever direction they choose to go to Carson City we will comply with that."
Someone with the Governor's Office said that Governor Lombardo would quickly sign a repeal to the cage free law.
We reached out to the Nevada Assembly Democratic Caucus if they would be interested in bringing that repeal through, and they sent us back a statement.
"We passed a fix with bipartisan compromise in AB171 that I worked on with the Governor’s administration, which dealt with the unforeseen event of the bird flu that limited our egg supply. I do not see us taking further action," said Howard Watts, Majority Whip.
