This is absurd. It violates what should be economic common sense. Nobody who wants eggs in Texas will not be able to get them. Rationing does not work. These businesses are missing a great opportunity to increase their profits, and thus their ability to obtain more eggs. They would be accused of price gauging if they did this, but this is the best way to efficiently distribute scarce resources, and to provide the resources to resolve the problem.

Hazlitt has a great chapter on this in his Economics In One Lesson. Here is my summary:

Chapter 17. Government Price Fixing. As seen in the previous chapter, efforts to artificially fix a price above current market levels doesn’t work. Neither does fixing it below the current value (usually attempted during wartime, and often lingering after). Unfortunately, this has the advantage of making politicians popular with consumers. They argue that prices should be based on what people need rather than how much they can pay; they aim to keep the cost of living from rising.
All price fixing increases demand and reduces supply (because profit margins are diminished, and marginal producers are put out of business). To avoid shortages, politicians try rationing, cost-control, subsidies, or universal price-fixing. Rationing limits the price and the quantity purchased (just like a free market would), but it does not stimulate production (like a free market would). Cost-control merely creates shortages of the items being controlled. Subsidies benefit the consumers, especially the wealthy, at the expense of the producers and the tax payers.
Price-fixing enables tyranny because fixing one item will lead to fixing another, and “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will” (Alexander Hamilton).
Price-fixing encourages the black market, causing harm “both economic and moral” (the black market is inefficient, and temps consumers to break the law). Politicians try it because they fail to understand that prices and shortages are caused by true scarcity or increase money supply. “Each one of us is a producer [wanting inflation], taxpayer [resenting subsidies], and consumer [wanting price control].” Each may seek political power for personal benefit, but they are deceiving themselves. “For not only must there be as much loss as gain from this political manipulation of prices; there must be a great deal more loss than gain, because price-fixing discourages and disrupts employment and production.”

Reminds me of the gas crisis in 1979. I was moving from California to my home state of Washington, driving a large U-Haul truck, with my car in tow and probably getting 5 miles per gallon.
One gas station I stopped at had a 5 gallon limit! Really...! So...I drove down the block and filled up at the next station (who didn't have a limit).
I wonder who the winner in THAT contest was.

"Never put all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind. :)

Yeah, but I'll bet the meat is all squishy like a jelly fish!

Grizzly dinner bell?!

Ahh, I think I got it - the noisy chickens attract bears! In the N.E. It's mainly foxes and fishers and maybe coyotes.

When I was a lad we raised about 40 turkeys for a few summers. Predators weren't a problem because those birds spent nights roosting in a 60' tall hemlock tree. In the A.M. when we went down to the pen to dole out the grain you'd have 40 kamikaze turkeys launch out of that tree and crash land at your feet!

Yummy free range turkeys, the smallest one dressed out at 22 lbs. Friends and neighbors who bought them complained about having to buy larger roasting pans...

Yes, this is aimed at not running out of stock when a local restaurant comes in and buys out most of your eggs. HEB has the family and individual as their primary market. If the family shopper can't get what they need they go elsewhere, which cuts into sales of other things. It is in the enlightened self-interest of the powers that be at HEB to keep the core of their business happy.

As usual hyperbole and a rush to judge and post causes claims of rationing and conspiracy, rather than applying reasoned thought and investigation.

Proclaiming conspiracy takes virtually no brain cells. Looking into things and applying thought reason is orders of magnitude more effort.

We could be raising chickens in our backyards. Fresh eggs and good meat.

Something to be said for that type of farming. My wife just gave away a chicken with 11 chicks and another hen, maybe we should have held onto them.

Costco was created for them, bulk at it's best...

That goes back to the barrage of pictures that used to go through the newspapers showing the Russians in Moscow always waiting in line. The joke was a Muscovite would always get in line and wait, just in case something good was on the other end. Then they had the "Party" shopping store which was huge and always seemed to be full of goodies. Only certain party members and diplomats could get in, so the US diplomats would take sneaky pictures in side and they would publish them in the papers to show how stingy the Commies were. Socialism at it's best....

"And so it begins. Food shortages in the USA?"
I say no way. I will be shocked if anyone who wants eggs in America can't get them. Save this comment. I'm saying categorically that it will not happen.

I shop at Central Market, which is owned by H-E-B. I went there today, and the only thing I saw was a sign at the egg section saying they are not selling eggs to commercial clients. There was no 3-carton limit.

or Welsh rarebit ... yum! -- j
.

Raise my own eggs and meat chickens. Hunt for wild turkeys if I want turkey. Living in my gulch and watching the world flailing like a hurt chicken priceless.

I live in that kind of town too. Lots of chickens and eggs around here. Of course here chickens are also referred to as a Grizzly Dinner Bell.

Actually, the owner of the building is a farm owner, so the eggs go in the refrigerated unit holding the energy drinks and such. Everyone who buys eggs brings back the empty cartons for further use.

This is a really small town :)

Your gym raises chickens?

Hahahahahaha

I'll count myself lucky (so far) to live in the relatively isolated North Country of New York State. I can get eggs from organically raised chickens at my gym.

I read the part about migrating birds to, but it was hard to understand how a sick bird could migrate from Asia to Minnesota. On the other hand, I am glad I don't know how the birds got infected. I wouldn't want to get a lead infection. I seem to be learning that part of being an Objectivist is knowing that the system is going to crash because of its built in flaws and accepting that. Remember what John told Dagney at the Gulches copper mine.

You may well be right. My main point however is that the business itself making the call...not some bureaucrat ordering it in the interest of what he or she considers "fair".

And so it begins.
Food shortages in the USA?
Atlas' greatest creation whose prosperity was the wonder of the 20th century is running out of a staple food? What's next? The Pirate says it'll be turkeys. I wonder what will happen if it becomes less marginal foods. A.R. was no Nostradamus, but A is A and if certain people create certain events as promulgated in the novel -- there will be shortages. I wonder how our millions of mooches with their jaws wide open like newly hatched birds will react when nothing falls into their open mouths.

We know how easy it is to introduce a bird transmitted disease into the country, especially if there is money at stake. One country who dislikes the US, or stands to make money on it,, maybe a high sign from certain government-connected opportunist , deed accomplished.

This is to a large extent the reason for the ongoing ammunition shortages we have seen on and off since Clinton.

In AS Ayn covers the subject of public perception vs reality pretty well. What very few people know is the magnitude of "stuff" stored in coolers and warehouses for the commodities markets. Not to mention the eggs that are stored by the Dept. of Agriculture, or the military. Remember the "Cheese Shortage", that Regan squashed by tapping into the Cheese the government had stored up. Think about it. That program is still going on and they haven't run out yet.