US to Import ‘Hundreds of Millions’ of Eggs to Address Shortages
WASHINGTON — Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters at the White House on Friday that the United States will soon begin importing “hundreds of millions” of eggs to overcome shortages caused by the avian flu outbreak.
“Right now we’ve got Turkey and South Korea importing eggs, and just yesterday I talked to a couple of other countries that will soon begin importing as well,” she said as she stood outside the West Wing.
She said she didn’t want to name the other possible importing countries until the deals are signed.
“These imports will be significant enough to help continue to bring the price of eggs down for right now and then after we’ve repopulated our laying chicken population and we’ve got a full egg laying industry going again — hopefully in a couple of months — we’ll shift back to our domestic egg layers and move their eggs out onto our store shelves,” she said.
More than 30 million egg-laying chickens have died since the start of the year because of avian flu, data from the Department of Agriculture shows, this on top of the more than 20 million egg-layers lost in the fourth quarter of 2024 — then considered the worst toll inflicted on America’s egg supply since the outbreak began.
The USDA has confirmed 40 outbreaks of the highly pathogenic avian influenza in nine states. To date, Ohio has borne the brunt of 2025 outbreaks, with 13.3 million of egg-layer losses occurring in the state’s flocks.
Rollins said the good news is the United States is starting to get the outbreak, which started almost two years ago, under control.
“Part of the five-point plan we laid out a month ago to address this crisis was encouraging the broader use of biosecurity measures,” she said.
“That means locking down your barns,” she added.
“The number one prong of our plan was to invest a significant amount of money on audits across the country and help egg-laying companies to secure their barns, and [the] good news is it’s working, resulting in a significant decline in the bird flu,” she said.
Rollins was also asked about President Donald Trump’s tariffs and how they might affect the large number of farmers who are currently struggling to make ends meet.
Acknowledging that that question is the “number one question I hear from farmers,” the Agriculture secretary said her answer is always the same.
“This first thing is, the president is very focused on realigning the economy to better serve all Americans,” she said. “Second, the farmers understood when they supported President Trump that tariffs were part of his agenda.
“He always spoke about tariffs, whether it was in 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020 or again in 2023 and 2025, and they supported him, giving him 80% to 90% of their vote,” Rollins continued.
“So they understood his vision and that there may be some short-term challenges to go with that in the current farm economy,” she said.
“The third thing I’ll say is the president is very focused on the front end on what the implementation of tariffs might do to our farming community, and he’s tasked me to put programs in place, like direct aid payments and so forth, to mitigate any economic catastrophes that might befall some of our farmers,” Rollins said.
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