CHICAGO, March 14, 2025 — With the price of domestic eggs festering into a hot political issue, the White House said it will consider ways of temporarily boosting imports of the kitchen staple.

Simultaneously, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said, the administration will evaluate measures that would discourage domestic producers from shipping eggs abroad.
 
The promised due diligence is part of a five-point plan revealed at the end of February to counter the price spike on both a near and long-term basis. 
 
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said her department would spend $1 billion on the strategy.  

About $500 million would be used to bolster the nation’s biosecurity protections against avian flu, which has prompted the destruction of 166 million laying hens since 2022, according to the USDA. 
 
Across the 150 farms where new and more stringent safeguards have already been adopted, only one bird contracted the disease, the department said.
 
Another $400 million has been earmarked for farmers who’ve been forced to eradicate their flocks. The money is intended to help the producers hasten the repopulation of their livestock and bring production back to where it was before the epidemic. 
 
The remaining $100 million will go toward such preventative measures as developing new avian vaccines and finding ways of stopping the infection’s spread without across-the-board eradication of flocks.  Currently, the detection of even a limited outbreak at a facility triggers the destruction of all the chickens.
 
At the bottom of the USDA’s list is fostering the import of eggs. A vast majority of eggs consumed in the United States are produced domestically, according to the trade group United Egg Producers. 

The USDA said the door would be opened wider to foreign producers only after the safety of the imports could be ensured.  It also stressed that any action taken on that front would likely be temporary.

But the department offered few other details about when it might conclude its investigation of how to boost imports and what the effects might be.

With egg supplies dropping because of avian flu, the price of a dozen eggs has soared into double-digits in some markets. The USDA has projected that the retail price will increase 41.1% in total during 2025.

It foresees wholesale prices rising by 82.6%, but warns that predictions are complicated by the extreme volatility in the supplies and price of eggs. 

As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.