U.S. Lays out $1 Billion Plan to Combat Bird Flu Egg Shortages

The Washington Post

12:12 JST, February 27, 2025

As avian flu continues to impact millions of laying hens, causing egg prices to soar to new highs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it will invest $1 billion to try to curb the spread of the virus and bring consumer prices back down to earth.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the department has developed a five-pronged strategy to eradicate avian flu, which farmers have found virtually impossible to contain over the past two-plus years. The plan includes $500 million to upgrade biosecurity at poultry farms as well as $400 million in financial relief to farmers whose flocks have been decimated by the flu. The money earmarked for biosecurity would help farmers who have been channeling millions of their own dollars to improve security.

The department will also explore more egg imports to help lower consumer prices, invest money into vaccines and other therapeutics for poultry flocks, and look at dismantling regulations, such as California’s Proposition 12, which establishes minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens and, Rollins suggests, contributes to higher prices for consumers.

“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,” Rollins wrote. “This approach will also ensure stability over the next four years and beyond.”

The plan comes less than a month after the price of eggs hit an all-time high. In January, the average price for large, Grade A eggs in U.S. cities reached $4.95 per dozen, nearly double the price from the previous January and about $3 more than in January 2022, according to statistics with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some restaurants have added egg surcharges to their menus to cover the price increases.

Bird flu is the cause for the spikes. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has killed more than 166 million birds since 2022 and affected 973 dairy herds in 16 states. More than 12,200 wild birds have been detected with the virus in 51 jurisdictions. To date, 70 human cases have been identified, and there is no known person-to-person spread. The CDC considers the risk to public health low.

One of the Trump administration’s biggest investments will be in biosecurity to protect poultry farms from the virus. Rollins noted that the USDA will build on a pilot program started under the Biden administration: Dubbed the Wildlife Biosecurity Assessments, the program conducted audits at about 150 sites between January 2023 and January 2025 to help producers address risks identified by USDA inspectors. “Only one of these sites has subsequently been affected by avian flu,” Rollins wrote.

What’s more, noted Kailee Tkacz Buller, chief of staff at the agency, “we are working to deploy 20 trained epidemiologists as part of our biosecurity audit to really work with the farmers and the producers, to understand where they can clean up their facilities and reduce” risks.

The strategy rollout came just days after Rollins traveled to four states to listen to farmers and ranchers speak about the issues they’re facing. She also hosted a roundtable for a number of governors to discuss how they can work together to combat avian flu. On Friday, President Donald Trump acknowledged the concerns at a gathering of the nation’s governors at the White House.

“I’m hearing so much about eggs,” Trump said. “… You got to figure something out fast.”

United Egg Producers, a cooperative of U.S. egg farmers, was supportive of the plan. In a statement to The Washington Post, the group said it “stands ready to partner with the administration and USDA in these critical initiatives. Our teams are reviewing the plan with our members so we can identify immediate ways to provide support for and amplification of this robust strategy to stop the spread of HPAI across our nation.”

In the past, the United States has been hesitant to vaccinate poultry flocks against avian flu because U.S. farmers would be unable to sell products to foreign markets that shy away from meat or eggs from vaccinated birds, said Craig Rowles, chief science officer with Versova, a company that owns and operates egg-laying facilities in multiple states. The egg industry has traditionally culled flocks infected with bird flu, he said, but between those efforts and increased biosecurity measures, nothing has been able to stop the spread of bird flu. The virus’s presence in wild bird populations has made it difficult to control in commercial flocks, Rowles said.

Which explains why the industry and the Trump administration are looking toward vaccines as a potential solution. Earlier this month, the USDA granted a conditional license for one bird flu vaccine. The license generally allows the vaccine to be used in emergency and special situations. But Rowles cautions that vaccines are not a quick fix. He said it will take time to approve a vaccination program, figure out a surveillance plan for flocks, hammer out agreements with trading partners and implement vaccines on farms. Rowles said it could be a two-year process.

“This is going to take time to implement, but I guarantee it’s the right thing to do for the industry, because what we’re doing today is not sustainable,” Rowles said. “It’s not sustainable for the producers that take care of the birds. It’s not sustainable for our federal government, and it’s not sustainable for our retail and consuming public.”

Critics of the plan, however, find it ironic that the USDA is relying so heavily on vaccines as its counterpart, the Food and Drug Administration, is “attacking them,” said Timothy Lytton, a regents’ professor at Georgia State University College of Law.

“This kind of contradiction is likely to create pharma industry whiplash,” Lytton said in an email. “With one hand, the administration is attacking science research funding, while on the other hand, it is placing its faith in advances in medical science.”

Lytton also finds it strange that the USDA is relying on imports to ease the egg shortage, given the “administration’s industrial policy of keeping production” in the United States. Yet the agency will look to Turkey, among other countries, for egg imports. The United States could increase its egg purchases from Turkey from 70 million a year to an estimated 420 million this year, a USDA spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman added that, wherever the agency looks for egg imports, it will make sure the products meet safety requirements for American consumers.

To help fund the planned initiatives, Rollins said the Agriculture Department is working with the U.S. DOGE Service “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.” At the news conference on Wednesday, however, a spokeswoman suggested that the money is already available in the agency’s coffers.

Regardless of the funding source, Rollins said, “there’s no silver bullet to eradicating avian flu.” Meanwhile, the USDA predicts egg prices will rise about 41 percent in 2025.