WASHINGTON: The USA is importing Turkish and South Korean eggs to ease an avian flu-fuelled provide crunch that has pushed up costs throughout the nation, Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary confirmed Friday (Mar 21).
Brooke Rollins informed reporters in Washington that imports from Türkiye and South Korea had already begun and that the White Home was additionally in talks with different international locations about quickly importing their eggs.
“We’re speaking within the a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of eggs for the brief time period,” she added.
The price of eggs has skyrocketed resulting from a number of hen flu outbreaks in the US, forcing farmers to cull no less than 30 million birds and sharply constraining provide.
Egg costs turned a rallying level for Trump in final yr’s presidential election marketing campaign as he sought to capitalise on voters’ frustrations with the rising price of important objects throughout his predecessor Joe Biden’s presidency.
After returning to workplace in January, Trump tasked Rollins with the job of boosting the availability of eggs, and bringing down costs.
Within the weeks since, producers in a number of international locations have reported American curiosity of their produce, with the Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations telling AFP that that they had been approached by US diplomatic workers on the hunt for contemporary eggs.
“There’s a scarcity of eggs in lots of international locations,” Katarzyna Gawronska, director of Poland’s Nationwide Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, mentioned not too long ago. “The important thing query could be what monetary situations could be supplied by the Individuals.”
The USA Division of Agriculture (USDA) not too long ago famous that wholesale egg costs have fallen by nearly 50 per cent since late February, which means that client costs may quickly begin to fall.
“The downward development underscores the effectiveness of USDA’s strategy,” the company mentioned in a press release.
Talking to reporters on Friday, Rollins mentioned that the imports of eggs would cease as soon as US poultry farmers had been capable of ramp up provide.
“When our hen populations are repopulated and we have got a full egg laying business going once more – hopefully in a few months – we then shift again to our inner egg layers and shifting these eggs out onto the shelf,” she mentioned.
