Rollins said the administration would move back to ‘our internal egg layers’ once chicken populations are repopulated again.
Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins said on March 21 that the Trump administration is now importing millions of eggs from South Korea and Turkey and that other nations will likely contribute in the ensuing weeks.
“Right now, we’ve got Turkey and South Korea importing eggs. Just yesterday, I talked to a couple of other countries that will soon begin importing. We haven’t signed that deal yet, so I don’t want to say who it is,” Rollins told reporters at the White House on Friday.
The secretary said the magnitude was “hundreds of millions of eggs” for the short term, “not insignificant, but significant enough to help continue to bring the prices down for right now.”
“When our chicken populations are repopulated, and we’ve got a full egg-laying industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal egg-layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf,” Rollins said.
With egg prices skyrocketing in recent months after millions of chickens were slaughtered due to bird flu infections within flocks, causing an egg shortage, the Trump administration has been working to lower the cost.
The Department of Agriculture said last month that more than 23 million birds were slaughtered in January to contain the virus, which followed the culling of more than 18 million the month prior.
A senior department official told The Epoch Times that chicken culling continues to limit the spread of the disease as no better option is available.
The agency published a projection in February that suggested egg prices could climb by 41 percent this year after increasing by 53 percent since January 2024.
“Retail egg prices continue to experience volatile month-to-month changes due to an outbreak of HPAI [avian influenza] that began in 2022. HPAI contributes to elevated egg prices by reducing egg-layer flocks and egg production. About 18.8 million commercial egg layers were affected by HPAI in January 2025, the highest monthly total since the outbreak began in 2022,” the projection states.
By Jacob Burg
