# Egg & Butter Brief

**Issue 1: October 2026**
Field Assembly Market Publications · October 18, 2026 · Data run `2026-10-18T144956Z`

This is the first issue of the Egg & Butter Brief. It is written for a bakery, pastry shop or breakfast business facing a supplier's price claim on eggs or butter. It reports market evidence. It does not estimate any supplier's cost and draws no conclusion about any contract.

## The read

Both ingredients are a long way below where they were a year ago. The producer price index for chicken eggs is 75.3% below September 2025 and 82.3% below September 2024. Against its highest month in the past two years, February 2025, it is down 93.1%. The producer price index for butter is 32.0% below September 2025 and 55.7% below September 2024.

Retail has come down too, but nothing like as far. The consumer price index for eggs is 20.6% below September 2025 against the producer index's 75.3%; for butter, 10.3% against 32.0%. These are different measures and not two readings of one price, so the gap between them is not a margin and this record cannot say what it is made of. What the September indexes do establish is narrow and worth stating exactly: they do not support a general claim that egg or butter prices were higher than a year earlier. They do not establish what happened to any particular supplier's costs.

Comparison dates matter, and the weekly series show why. The CME Grade AA butter weekly average rose 1.8% in the week ending October 16, to $1.3110 from $1.2880. That does not contradict a year-over-year fall of 24.3% in the mandatory wholesale price. It does mean a quote priced at the bottom of a weekly series can sit below today's.

Supply is the part of the picture that moved with prices. Total layers averaged 382,801 thousand birds in August 2026, 4.6% above August 2025, and table egg production reached 8,121.6 million eggs, 6.0% higher. More eggs, and a much lower producer price, are consistent. This record does not establish that one caused the other.

## The numbers

| Measure | Latest | Same period, prior year | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPI, chicken eggs (index) | 89.9 (Sept 2026) | 363.3 (Sept 2025) | −75.3% | BLS WPU0171 |
| CPI, eggs (index) | 279.3 (Sept 2026) | 351.7 (Sept 2025) | −20.6% | BLS CUUR0000SEFH |
| PPI, butter (index) | 100.4 (Sept 2026) | 147.7 (Sept 2025) | −32.0% | BLS WPU0232 |
| CPI, butter (index) | 286.2 (Sept 2026) | 319.0 (Sept 2025) | −10.3% | BLS CUUR0000SS10011 |
| CPI, food away from home (index) | 398.8 (Sept 2026) | 385.5 (Sept 2025) | +3.5% | BLS CUUR0000SEFV |
| Total layers during the month, including hatching-egg layers (thousand) | 382,801 (Aug 2026) | 366,028 (Aug 2025) | +4.6% | USDA NASS Chickens and Eggs |
| Table egg production (million eggs) | 8,121.6 (Aug 2026) | 7,662.8 (Aug 2025) | +6.0% | USDA NASS Chickens and Eggs |
| Butter, wholesale weighted average ($/lb, week ending) | 1.3600 (Oct 10, 2026) | 1.7959 (Oct 11, 2025) | −24.3% | USDA AMS NDPSR |
| Butter, four-week simple average of weekly weighted prices ($/lb) | 1.3860 | 1.8556 | −25.3% | USDA AMS NDPSR |
| Butter, reported qualifying pounds sold (week ending) | 2,780,060 (Oct 10, 2026) | 3,135,144 (Oct 11, 2025) | −11.3% | USDA AMS NDPSR |
| CME Grade AA butter, weekly average ($/lb, week ending) | 1.3110 (Oct 16, 2026) | 1.2880 (prior week, Oct 9, 2026) | +1.8% | CME via USDA AMS Dairy Market News |
| Shell eggs, Large, national delivered warehouse (cents/dozen, week ending) | 66.19 (Oct 17, 2026; prior week 74.19) | — | — | USDA AMS report 2848 |
| Shell eggs, Large, national delivered warehouse, four-week simple average (cents/dozen) | 71.82 | — | — | USDA AMS report 2848 |
| Shell eggs, Large, Midwest paid to producers (cents/dozen, week ending) | 38.00 (Oct 17, 2026; prior week 46.00) | — | — | USDA AMS report 2848 |
| Shell eggs, Large, Midwest paid to producers, four-week simple average (cents/dozen) | 44.50 | — | — | USDA AMS report 2848 |
| Shell eggs, Large, Northeast delivered warehouse (cents/dozen, week ending) | 67.00 (Oct 17, 2026; prior week 75.00) | — | — | USDA AMS report 2848 |

Two-year comparisons, where the record allows them: egg PPI −82.3% and egg CPI −21.6% against September 2024; butter PPI −55.7% and butter CPI −11.9%; food away from home +7.3%.

## The explanation

Four kinds of measure appear above and they answer different questions. The producer price indexes measure selling prices received by domestic producers and exclude imports. The consumer price indexes measure what shoppers pay at retail. The mandatory dairy report and the shell egg report are surveyed transaction prices for named products in named markets at a stated week. The NASS figures are counts of birds and eggs, not prices at all. None of them is a supplier's cost, and a movement in one does not fix a movement in another.

The two weekly series are narrower than the words "eggs" and "butter" suggest. Report 2848 quotes caged white eggs in cartons. The mandatory butter price covers salted butter at eighty percent butterfat, fresh or storage, in 25-kilogram and 68-pound boxes meeting USDA Grade AA standards, and the volume beside it is the pounds that qualified for that report rather than all butter sold in the country. A bakery buying cage-free eggs, unsalted butter, or a higher-butterfat European-style butter is buying something these two series do not price.

Eggs are the larger move by a wide margin. The producer index stood at 89.9 in September 2026 against 1,302.3 at its February 2025 peak, which is the highest month the past two years hold. This record documents the level and the date. It does not establish what drove either.

The three shell egg markets this issue reports all read lower in the week ending October 17 than the week before, as the report states them: national delivered warehouse 66.19 against 74.19 cents a dozen, Midwest paid to producers 38.00 against 46.00, and Northeast delivered warehouse 67.00 against 75.00. The four-week averages, 71.82 and 44.50 cents for the first two markets, sit above the latest week in both. That is not the same as a sustained decline: the national series ran 72.94, 73.94 and 74.19 cents over the three preceding weeks, so it rose for two weeks before this week's fall.

Butter is lower on the year at both the wholesale and the retail level, and the reported qualifying volume fell with it: 2,780,060 pounds in the week ending October 10, 11.3% below the comparable week of 2025. Lower price and lower volume together can mean several things and this record cannot distinguish them. USDA's Food Price Outlook puts egg consumer prices 23.0% lower from August 2025 to August 2026 and dairy products 0.3% lower, and gives forecast intervals for calendar 2027 against the 2026 average of −30.3% to 47.8% for eggs and −5.0% to 8.4% for dairy. The egg interval is wide enough to be worth reading as the honest statement of uncertainty it is.

## The uncertainty

This is the first issue of this title, and several series carry no year-over-year comparison yet. The CME butter reprint and the three shell egg markets state one period per report, so this record accumulates them a week at a time and holds five weeks of each. Those rows show a latest week, a prior week as the report states it, and where four weeks exist a simple average of them. They will carry a year-over-year figure when the record holds a year.

This issue compares each series to the same period a year earlier and, where the record holds it, two years earlier. Month-to-month movement is not in this issue's computed set, so nothing here measures September against August.

The four-week butter figure is a simple average of four weekly weighted prices, each week counting equally. Weighting those weeks by the pounds sold behind them would give a different number. The row is labelled for the method used.

The layer count is the total average number of layers during the month, which includes hens producing hatching eggs rather than table eggs. The table egg production figure beside it counts only table eggs. The two are not a matched pair, and this record does not parse the separate table-egg flock the same report publishes.

Report 2848 covers more markets than the three reported here: the record holds Large white quotations for seven markets, including Midwest delivered store door, South Central and Southeast, and the three computed in this issue were chosen as a national reading, a producer-level reading and a Northeast reading. A buyer in another region should read the market that matches where they buy.

The NASS figures are for August 2026, the newest month that report publishes, and the record holds no August 2024 reading, so neither carries a two-year comparison.

The USDA Food Price Outlook figures are year-over-year from August 2025 to August 2026, not September to September, and the forecast intervals are for the calendar 2027 average against the 2026 average. They cover eggs and dairy products as categories, not butter on its own.

The shell egg prices and the mandatory butter price are surveyed prices in named markets, not an offer available to any particular buyer, and a bakery's delivered cost includes terms this record does not see.

## The buyer's question

Ask the supplier three things before accepting an egg or butter increase.

Which product: caged white shell eggs or cage-free; salted bulk butter at eighty percent butterfat or unsalted, higher-fat or printed retail packs. These are quoted in different places and move by different amounts, and the weekly figures above are caged white eggs and salted bulk butter.

Which dates: the date the original quote priced from, and the date the adjustment references. A series this far below its own recent peak can still be above a quote priced at the bottom, and the CME butter week above rose 1.8%.

Which series: the published series or supplier invoice behind the stated increase. Every series above is free and public, and this month the egg and butter indexes that carry year-over-year comparisons are all lower than a year ago, at both the producer and the retail level.

## The record

Sources and retrieval. The issue's own run is `2026-10-18T144956Z`, captured October 18, 2026. Two sources state one period per report and their history is accumulated from earlier runs, so this issue also rests on captures from September 23 and 25 and October 2, 9 and 16, 2026. Every one of them, with its retrieval time and SHA-256, is listed in `evidence.json`, where each entry names the run it came from and whether it is this issue's run or accumulated history.

- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public API v1. PPI commodity indexes WPU0171 (chicken eggs) and WPU0232 (butter); CPI-U CUUR0000SEFH (eggs), CUUR0000SS10011 (butter), CUUR0000SEFV (food away from home). Not seasonally adjusted. Latest month September 2026.
- USDA AMS National Dairy Products Sales Report, mandatory weekly reporting: salted butter at eighty percent butterfat, fresh or storage, in 25-kilogram and 68-pound boxes meeting USDA Grade AA standards, with the weighted average price and the qualifying pounds sold, week ending Saturday. Full history in one request. Latest week ending October 10, 2026.
- USDA AMS Dairy Market News, weekly printed report, page 1, which reprints the CME Group cash market for Grade AA butter. Each report carries one week, so this series accumulates in the record one week per run. Latest week ending October 16, 2026.
- USDA AMS report 2848, Weekly Combined Regional Shell Egg Report: caged white eggs in cartons, Large, by market. Each report carries the current and prior week. Latest week ending October 17, 2026.
- USDA NASS, Chickens and Eggs: average number of layers during the month, all layers including those producing hatching eggs, and table egg production. Latest month August 2026.
- USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, CPI forecast table.
- USDA AMS Egg Markets Overview, retained as a weekly narrative and not parsed, so it contributes no figure to this issue.

Method: every figure in this issue appears in `numbers.json`, regenerated from the data files by `tools/issue.py`. Capture files are hashed into an external timestamp chain anchored by RFC 3161 tokens from two timestamp authorities, which show they existed unchanged by the anchor date. An OpenTimestamps proof is stored for this edition's anchor; its Bitcoin attestation is collected by a later upgrade run. An external timestamp shows when a captured record existed. It does not show that a source's figure was correct or that a quoted price was available to every buyer.

Corrections: none. This issue is the first of this title. Two defects in the record's own tooling were found and fixed before these numbers were computed, and both are described in `edition.json` and in PROVENANCE.md: the computed set could not reach the weeks this record had accumulated for the sources that publish one period per report, and figures whose exact decimal fell on a half were printed one unit low.

Next issue: after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases October producer price indexes on November 13, 2026.