American consumers could get additional options for egg purchases, but it would also mean increased competition for U.S. egg producers. The Trump administration has been reaching out to foreign countries to import eggs to help offset the shortage in this country that led to surging prices following the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has suggested several initiatives to increase egg supply to lower egg prices:
--Earlier this month, Rollins said that more Americans could raise chickens in their backyards to help build up egg supplies amid skyrocketing prices. "I think the silver lining for all this is how do we in our back yards…we've got chickens too in our back yard,” Rollins told Fox News, “How do we solve something like this? And people are sort of looking around and thinking, 'Wow! Maybe I could get a chicken in my back yard, and it's awesome.’”
--In February, Rollins wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal revealing that the administration would invest $1 billion to address the egg shortage. “We are working with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending. We will repurpose some of those dollars by investing in long-term solutions to avian flu, which has resulted in about 166 million laying hens being culled since 2022,” Rollins wrote.
$1 Billion in Federal Assistance for Egg Industry
Rollins broke down the $1 billion assistance in her op-ed piece:
“We will dedicate up to $500 million to helping U.S. poultry producers implement gold-standard biosecurity measures.”
“We will make up to $400 million of increased financial relief available to farmers whose flocks are affected by avian flu, and we will assist them in receiving faster approval to begin safe operations again after an outbreak.”
“While vaccines aren’t a stand-alone solution, we will 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.”
Egg Prices Challenge the Trump Administration
The BBC wrote about the challenge for the new administration to find ways to lower egg costs after campaigning extensively on lowering prices for Americans. “Despite President Trump's campaign promise to reduce prices, the cost of eggs has surged more than 65% over the past year, and it is projected to rise by 41% in 2025,” the BBC reported.
(It is important to note that while Trump campaigned on lowering prices, he took office in January. His policies and decisions aren’t accurately reflected in egg prices for the previous 12 months.)
--A third recent action by the agriculture secretary to address the egg crisis was to reach out to other countries. Rollins has sought additional supply by increasing imports of hundreds of millions of eggs from Turkey and South Korea. Rollins said, “We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term. So not insignificant, but significant enough to help continue to bring the prices down for right now.”
She added, “And then when our chicken populations are repopulated, and we’ve got a full egg-laying industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal egg-layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf.”
RELATED: Here is what Mindy Larsen, CEO of the Iowa Egg Council and the North Central Poultry Association, hopes will happen in 2025 to help the egg supply for producers.
