Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is laying out the Trump administration's comprehensive plan to bring down soaring egg prices, the White House announced on Wednesday.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Rollins presented her strategy to combat avian influenza, which has devastated American poultry farmers and greatly reduced the egg supply over the past two years.
She said that the Agriculture Department will invest up to $1 billion to deal with the crisis and bring down the price of eggs.
As part of the plan, she declared that "we are working with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending" and will use some of the savings to invest in "long-term solutions to avian flu, which has resulted in about 166 million laying hens being culled since 2022."
Rollins said the department has developed a five-pronged strategy, because "there's no silver bullet to eradicating avian flu."
The first step will be to allocate up to $500 million to aid U.S. poultry producers in implementing gold-standard biosecurity measures.
The second part of the plan is to make available up to $400 million of increased financial relief to farmers whose flocks are affected by avian flu, as well as assisting them in receiving faster approval to start safe operations again after an outbreak.
As a third measure, the department is examining the use of vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens.
Rollins stated that "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," which should help reduce the need to kill chickens on a farm where there is an outbreak.
In addition to combating avian flu, another part of the strategy is to take other actions to lower the price of eggs.
As an example, Rollins said that unnecessary regulatory burdens on egg producers will be removed where possible — including "examining the best way to protect farmers from overly prescriptive state laws, such as California's Proposition 12, which established minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, increasing production costs and contributing to the Golden State's average price of $9.68 a dozen."
Rollins said that the final part of the plan is to consider temporary import options in order to lower egg costs in the short term.
She stated that this will take place 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."
Rollins said the Agriculture Department is confident that this overall plan "will restore stability to the egg market over the next three to six months," as well as ensure stability over the next four years and beyond.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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