As egg prices continue to soar in the United States, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Wednesday that the administration is considering “temporary import options to reduce egg costs in the short term.”
Rollins wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explaining how her department will address the nationwide egg shortage and fend off the avian flu. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that the average price for a dozen eggs nationwide was $4.95 in January, but that number — which was already a 53% increase from the year before — is predicted to go up another 41% in 2025, according to a USDA report released on Tuesday.
The department said that in January alone over 18 million commercial egg layers were affected by the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). That was the highest monthly total since the beginning of the outbreak in 2022. Rollins said that around 166 million laying hens have been killed over the course of the HPAI outbreak. To address the egg shortage and get prices back down, Rollins rolled out a “five-pronged strategy,” which includes potentially importing eggs from other countries.
“We will proceed with imports only if the eggs meet stringent U.S. safety standards and if we determine that doing so won’t jeopardize American farmers’ access to markets in the future,” Rollins wrote.
Some U.S. businesses have already started looking to Turkey, the country, to get their eggs. Turkey plans on exporting 420 million eggs to the United States this year, which would be the most ever, CNN reported. Meanwhile, stores such as Trader Joe’s, Kroger, and Costco have limited how many cartons of eggs a customer can purchase in one trip, and the breakfast chain Waffle House is tacking on a 50-cent surcharge for every egg ordered.
“There’s no silver bullet to eradicating avian flu,” the Agriculture secretary wrote. “That’s why we have developed a five-pronged strategy. First, we will dedicate up to $500 million to helping U.S. poultry producers implement gold-standard biosecurity measures.”
The USDA will also give farmers access to increased financial relief if their flocks have been affected by the disease and “provide up to $100 million in research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, to improve their efficacy and efficiency.”
“This should help reduce the need to ‘depopulate’ flocks, which means killing chickens on a farm where there’s an outbreak,” Rollins wrote.
In another strategy to lower egg prices for Americans, Rollins said that the administration will slash “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on egg producers while seeking to protect farmers from “overly prescriptive state laws, such as California’s Proposition 12, which established minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, increasing production costs and contributing to the Golden State’s average price of $9.68 a dozen.” Rollins added that it’s important to make it easier for Americans to raise their own “backyard chickens.”
“This five-point strategy won’t erase the problem overnight, but we’re confident that it will restore stability to the egg market over the next three to six months,” she added. “This approach will also ensure stability over the next four years and beyond.”
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[[{“value”:”
As egg prices continue to soar in the United States, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Wednesday that the administration is considering “temporary import options to reduce egg costs in the short term.”
Rollins wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explaining how her department will address the nationwide egg shortage and fend off the avian flu. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that the average price for a dozen eggs nationwide was $4.95 in January, but that number — which was already a 53% increase from the year before — is predicted to go up another 41% in 2025, according to a USDA report released on Tuesday.
The department said that in January alone over 18 million commercial egg layers were affected by the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). That was the highest monthly total since the beginning of the outbreak in 2022. Rollins said that around 166 million laying hens have been killed over the course of the HPAI outbreak. To address the egg shortage and get prices back down, Rollins rolled out a “five-pronged strategy,” which includes potentially importing eggs from other countries.
“We will proceed with imports only if the eggs meet stringent U.S. safety standards and if we determine that doing so won’t jeopardize American farmers’ access to markets in the future,” Rollins wrote.
Some U.S. businesses have already started looking to Turkey, the country, to get their eggs. Turkey plans on exporting 420 million eggs to the United States this year, which would be the most ever, CNN reported. Meanwhile, stores such as Trader Joe’s, Kroger, and Costco have limited how many cartons of eggs a customer can purchase in one trip, and the breakfast chain Waffle House is tacking on a 50-cent surcharge for every egg ordered.
“There’s no silver bullet to eradicating avian flu,” the Agriculture secretary wrote. “That’s why we have developed a five-pronged strategy. First, we will dedicate up to $500 million to helping U.S. poultry producers implement gold-standard biosecurity measures.”
The USDA will also give farmers access to increased financial relief if their flocks have been affected by the disease and “provide up to $100 million in research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, to improve their efficacy and efficiency.”
“This should help reduce the need to ‘depopulate’ flocks, which means killing chickens on a farm where there’s an outbreak,” Rollins wrote.
In another strategy to lower egg prices for Americans, Rollins said that the administration will slash “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on egg producers while seeking to protect farmers from “overly prescriptive state laws, such as California’s Proposition 12, which established minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, increasing production costs and contributing to the Golden State’s average price of $9.68 a dozen.” Rollins added that it’s important to make it easier for Americans to raise their own “backyard chickens.”
“This five-point strategy won’t erase the problem overnight, but we’re confident that it will restore stability to the egg market over the next three to six months,” she added. “This approach will also ensure stability over the next four years and beyond.”
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