It's hard to swallow, but the rising cost of your breakfast is a taste you will be forced to acquire.

Egg prices are up, along with bacon, because of climate-influenced animal disease and a growing world population that demands more protein.

One of the world's largest producers of liquid eggs – already cracked and sold mostly in bulk to restaurants and bakeries – is practically in my backyard. Called Rembrandt Foods, the plant has been shut down since last spring over the bird flu. It's the company's second shutdown in seven years. Five million laying hens were destroyed. More than 200 workers, mainly immigrant, were laid off. There is no word on when the huge henhouse will cluck again.

The same flu caused more than 400,000 turkeys to be snuffed out in four counties around Storm Lake, Iowa, where the agri-giant Tyson Foods operates both turkey and pork processing plants employing some 3,000 workers.

Maybe you've priced a turkey with mayo on wheat lately.

Waterfowl spread the flu. In recent years, geese that used to migrate through the Dakotas and Nebraska shifted east to fly over the densest livestock production area in North America – Northwest Iowa – because of epic drought. As they fly, they poop, shedding virus as they go. A breeze passes over the teeming feces and into hog houses holding 1,000 porkers, or turkey barns filled with 20,000 birds. Once the flu is inside, it spreads like … flu.

No longer an epidemic, the flu has become endemic. It's not even seasonal anymore. Rembrandt's hens got hit in March while Tyson's turkeys went down in December. Experts exhort producers to practice biosecurity, but Rembrandt was. After a flu wave in 2015 killed production, the Rembrandt plant was sealed up tight. But a virus doesn't need a welcome mat to make itself at home.

Meanwhile, China is trying to rebuild its swine herd. The pork-lovingest people on Earth lost half their hogs to African swine flu in recent years; in response, they are erecting high-rise hog hotels of up to 26 stories. And African swine flu is not the worst scenario: Encephalitis can jump from hogs to humans.

When African swine flu spread to Haiti, my hometown shuddered: Storm Lake, Hog Capital of the World.

You begin to wonder if packing 5 million hens into one huge building, as my neighbors at Rembrandt have done in pursuit of more liquid eggs at lower prices for hungry people, is such a good idea anymore. The Upper Midwest can't handle the manure we're already pumping. Our rivers are rife with nitrate and phosphorus from it. The Gulf of Mexico is suffocating from it.

This is the price of modern food production. We never thought we'd see sliced turkey for $9.99 a pound right here in Turkey Town.

Something has to change. It's too late to wipe out bird flu: Bears out West are catching it, the Agriculture Department reports. A human in China turned up with a different strain. A healthy way forward might take a little from the past and a lot from the future.

Techniques from grandpa's day unquestionably yield healthier animals. Chickens pecking in the yard survived the 2015 bird flu even as turkeys died by the tens of thousands in a mega-barn a few hundred feet away. A hog bred for the pasture has stronger immunity than his cousin in a Chinese high-rise.

But human stomachs rumbling for protein number in the billions. How do we do healthy at massive scale?

Tyson, among others, is investing in "cultured" meat grown from the cells of swine, cattle and poultry. Folks say the resulting chicken tastes like … chicken. The protein market will stratify: When a customer can afford a premium rib-eye, there will be an (expensive) steer in a healthy meadow to meet the demand. But folks who want a chicken strip, a deli sandwich, a meat-lover's pizza or a burger buried in cheese won't know the difference between today's factory animal and tomorrow's lab-grown meat.

Most people scared of cultured meat have never seen how the stuff they're eating now gets made. As production of high-tech protein ramps up, the cost will come down – and demands on natural resources will ebb. (Arnold the pig can drink a gallon and a half of water per day.) And it's customizable. If you prefer fatty bacon, the beaker can accommodate that.

Meantime, the price of prime Iowa farmland was up another 17 percent last year, reaching around $16,000 per acre. Brokers expect it to go higher this year. The smart money knows where the golden egg lies.

So enjoy that breakfast – and while you can afford it, please leave the waitress a nice tip. She has to eat, too.

Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa.