Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday said that although egg prices will remain elevated, the egg industry has already overcome the most challenging phase of the crisis.
“We’re moving into Easter. The prices may creep up a little bit, but I think we’re past the tough part,” Rollins said during an interview on FOX Business Network’s “The Bottom Line.”
Rollins noted that egg prices earlier this year were 237% higher than when President Donald Trump left office in 2021. She said one of the major factors behind this increase was the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu.
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A growing number of bird flu outbreaks that began in 2022 have decimated flocks nationwide, leading to a significant shortage in the U.S. egg supply and drastically driving up prices.
But Rollins argued that the market has reacted to the “bold” five-part strategy that the Agriculture Department announced last month.
Rollins said the department is working to lock barns down quicker and focus on repopulating. It is also working to temporarily import eggs from other countries. Rollins said the agency is also investing in research and development for therapeutics and vaccines to try to fix this problem.
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“We rolled that out. We began talking to other countries around the world,” Rollins said. “I think we’ve had over 150 audits of barns around the country of significant egg laying and producers.”
However, farmers previously told FOX Business that while Rollins’ $1 billion strategy is an important step in solving the crisis, it will take time to see any major impact.
Bernt Nelson, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Foundation, told FOX Business that there have been newly reported cases of bird flu over the past several weeks and demand has also slowed slightly.
“The combination of those factors has allowed prices to ease a little bit,” he said. “While prices moved in a positive direction, eggs are still dramatically more expensive than at this time last year.”
Egg prices were up 10.4% in February from the prior month, according to Labor Department data. Prices jumped 58.5% on an annual basis.
The outbreaks have affected more than 166 million birds, including 127 million egg-laying birds, since 2022, leading to an average loss of 42.3 million egg layers per year, Nelson said. That’s equivalent to about 11% of the five-year average annual layer inventory of 383 million hens since the outbreak began, Nelson said.
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