The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has unveiled a new plan to combat bird flu, the spread of which has created a severe egg shortage and caused egg prices to spike in the US.
The $1bn plan includes financial aid for poultry farmers as well as funding for new research for treatment and vaccines. In the short term, the agency aims to increase egg imports to meet demand.
“American farmers need relief, and American consumers need affordable food,” wrote Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a Wall Street Journal editorial. “To every family struggling to buy eggs: We hear you, we’re fighting for you and help is on the way.”
But just how bad is the egg crisis, what are the details of Trump’s plan to ease prices and when could consumers get relief?
How much do eggs cost in the US?
On average, about $4.95 for a dozen.
That’s an all-time high – nearly double the price just one year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In some big cities, prices are even higher, hitting $8 to $10 per dozen in Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
The price hike has turned an everyday breakfast staple into an indulgence for many consumers. Some popular breakfast chains, such as Denny’s and Waffle House, have taken to adding surcharges for egg dishes. “A simple egg sandwich is like a luxury,” one grocery shopper in Chicago, Jon Harris, told the Reuters news agency.
Why are prices so high?
The spike is largely due to the rise in H5N1 avian flu cases in US poultry farms. Since February 2022, the virus has swept through all 50 states and Puerto Rico, hitting more than 1,600 flocks, according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
To prevent further spread, entire flocks are culled wherever viruses are detected. More than 160 million birds have been killed during the crisis, including 30 million this year, crippling commercial farms and causing major egg shortages.
“If there are no birds to lay eggs… then we have a supply shortage, and that leads to higher prices because of supply and demand dynamics,” explained Jada Thompson, a poultry specialist at the University of Arkansas.
At the start of this year, the number of egg-laying hens in the US stood at 304 million, an 11 percent decline from five years ago, according to the USDA.
What measures did previous President Joe Biden take?
Biden’s administration spent about $1.5bn combatting the spread of H5N1 after it resurged in 2022. In doing so, it followed longstanding US government policy to stamp out affected poultry populations through culling.
The reduction in number of chickens caused egg prices to steadily climb during Biden’s tenure – from $1.60 per dozen in February 2021 to $4.10 in December 2024. The price has continued to rise since then, hitting $4.95 this week.
In addition, Biden allocated more than $600m to stop the virus from spreading to humans, including through disease monitoring, treatment preparations and research on therapies, diagnostics and vaccine innovation.
What is different about Trump’s plan?
While Trump administration officials blamed Biden for causing the egg price hike due to culling policies, the USDA has stated it will continue with the same approach.
“No anticipated changes to our current stamping-out policy at this time,” said Rosemary Sifford, chief veterinary officer for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, on Wednesday.
However, the agency has announced a $1bn package of plans to tackle the egg shortage from different angles.
In a press release on Wednesday, the USDA said it would spend $500m to boost farms’ biosecurity protocols that protect poultry from catching H5N1 from wild birds, and $400m to reimburse farmers whose flocks have been culled. It also said it would invest $100m to develop new vaccines, treatments and solutions to protect chickens from bird flu and reduce the need to cull them, as well as improve surveillance during outbreaks.
In addition, the USDA says it will look into how to remove burdensome industry regulations that drive up prices, including for back yard poultry keepers, and temporarily import more eggs.
Where could the US get more eggs from?
The US produces the vast majority of the eggs it consumes. But with domestic prices at an all-time high, it is now looking to import more.
One country that it is turning to is Turkiye, which expects to ship 420 million eggs to the US this year, six times more than last year, according to the Turkish Egg Producers Central Union.
However, this is a small fraction of the US’s total demand, equaling less than a half percent of the 109 billion eggs it produced in the year leading up to November 2024, according to figures from USDA.
The US government has not specified the other countries it hopes to receive more eggs from, but it has historically received some imports from Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and China.
As of 2023, the Netherlands was the world’s biggest egg exporter, selling more than $1bn of eggs abroad, mainly to Germany, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Turkiye, with $441m in exports, ranked fifth. It sent most of its egg exports to the Gulf.
What do industry experts say?
Trump’s multipronged plan to address the egg crisis has been received positively by industry trade groups.
United Egg Producers, which represents companies producing more than 90 percent of US eggs, thanked Trump for “stepping up to take action”.
“President Trump and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins have demonstrated their commitment to working alongside America’s egg farmers in addressing the devastation of HPAI [avian influenza] on the US egg industry by driving resources and expertise to where they are most needed,” said the group’s President Chad Gregory in a statement shared on X.
UEP thanks President Trump and Secretary Rollins for their commitment to combating the devastating effects of highly pathogenic avian influenza #HPAI on U.S. #EggFarmers with this historic $1 billion investment.
Read our statement on this important initiative. @USDA @SecRollins pic.twitter.com/HgB4TVSOLE
— United Egg Producers (UEP) (@UnitedEggProd) February 26, 2025
However, some experts are pushing for a quicker rollout of vaccines for chickens, which are currently time-consuming to administer and risk unintentionally damaging the whole poultry market. That’s because some foreign buyers do not take poultry from countries that vaccinate against H5N1, fearing the vaccine might simply mask a proliferation of the virus.
“It sure seems to me that we’re going to have to start using vaccines if we want to start putting this fire out,” said Gregory Gray, a University of Texas Medical Branch professor.
Will egg prices fall or continue to rise?
The USDA projects egg prices will surge another 41 percent this year.
However, Rollins believes that within a year or two, prices will return to the $1.30 to $2 per dozen range observed during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021.
In a news conference on February 24, she said “the bottom line for consumers…is that we will fix it.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” she acknowledged.
