Agriculture Secretary Rollins announces plan to lower egg prices

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, said the U.S. will take five steps to tackle avian flu and bring down costs for American families. Rollins, who noted that the average price of a dozen eggs went up 237%, from $1.47 in January 2021 to $4.95 last month, says the Trump administration is “taking the issue seriously,” and that the Agriculture Department will invest up to $1B to curb this crisis and make eggs affordable again. She commented that “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.” The U.S. will dedicate $500M to helping U.S. poultry producers implement gold-standard biosecurity measures, Rollins said, adding that USDA has developed a successful pilot program, called Wildlife Biosecurity Assessments, to identify and implement more safety measures. The U.S. will also make up to $400M of increased financial relief available to farmers whose flocks are affected by avian flu, “we will assist them in receiving faster approval to begin safe operations again after an outbreak,” and USDA is exploring the use of vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens. “While vaccines aren’t a stand-alone solution, we will provide up to $100M in research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, to improve their efficacy and efficiency.” Rollins said the U.S. will remove unnecessary regulatory burdens on egg producers where possible and will consider temporary import options to reduce egg costs in the short term. “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.” Publicly traded companies include Vital Farms (VITL) and Cal-Maine Foods (CALM).