New York
CNN
—
At her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an unusual claim about the inflation that has stung American shoppers for years: Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the Department of Agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”
That’s not exactly correct, and it needs some context.
Those “killings” are required by the Department of Agriculture to contain the spread of the highly contagious avian flu that has afflicted 100 million birds since 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The egg-laying birds either die naturally or are culled to avoid the spread of the deadly virus. It is up to farmers to report an outbreak to state officials and the Department of Agriculture, which will eliminate the impacted flock. Farmers can apply for financial assistance from the USDA if they lose their flocks.
Americans have been slammed by record-high egg prices that are expected to get even more expensive. Egg prices are estimated to increase about 20% in 2025, compared to about 2.2% for food prices in general, according to the Department of Agriculture’s price outlook.
In November and December alone, the virus killed about 17.2 million egg-laying hens – half of 2024’s total, according to the USDA. The avian flu has also spread to dairy farms and been detected in humans.
The average price of a dozen large grade-A eggs was $4.15 in December, up from $3.65 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Egg prices were also up more than 36% year-over-year in December, according to the Consumer Price Index.
“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while,” Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, previously said to CNN. “Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue.”
And this comes during more than 20 consecutive months of record-high demand, according to Metz. The demand, which increased due to the holidays, contributes to the rising cost of eggs.
If the infected egg-laying birds weren’t killed, the virus could spread and egg prices could be even higher. Unless the Trump administration decides to change its bird flu policy, President Donald Trump’s USDA will also help assist in the “mass-killing” of chickens.
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump promised lower grocery prices “starting on Day One.” But those pledges have been challenged by economists, who said they’d be almost impossible to achieve and could risk creating a deflationary “doom loop.”
“No president is able to lower prices in a week, and some of the promises that were made about how quickly prices were going to come down were probably never achievable,” Tyler Schipper, economist and associate professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, previously told CNN. “Some of the most stark things that people are still seeing at the grocery store are almost entirely due to price dynamics that were in place before.”
CNN’s Auzinea Bacon and Alicia Wallace contributed to this report.
