Exotic Newcastle disease outbreak, California (2002-2003)
2002–2003: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 2 tracked ingredients — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
The California Department of Food and Agriculture and USDA confirmed exotic (virulent) Newcastle disease (END) in a Los Angeles County backyard flock on October 1, 2002. The virus subsequently spread to several commercial egg-laying operations in Southern California; more than half of the state's roughly 12 million commercial egg-producing hens were located inside the quarantine zone. The state-federal eradication response depopulated approximately 3.16 million birds across quarantined premises at a reported cost of about $161 million. The last infected commercial flock was detected March 26, 2003 (San Diego County) and the last infected backyard flock on May 31, 2003 (Los Angeles County); USDA lifted the nationwide quarantine after declaring the disease eradicated later in 2003.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- EggsDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
- Whole chickenDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
No sustained wholesale move in our detected set falls inside this event's window. The event is documented; our public price series simply didn't flag a notable departure from normal for these ingredients then — an honest absence, not a hidden one.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Eggs
In Eggs's 4 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Whole chicken
In Whole chicken's 3 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
3 sources
- Newcastle disease infiltrates Southern California poultry flocks — CIDRAP, University of Minnesota
- Exotic Newcastle Disease Outbreak in California — Veterinary Letter — California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA)
- Emergency declared: exotic Newcastle disease found in commercial poultry farms — American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA News)
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.