The United States is importing Turkish and South Korean eggs to ease an avian flu-fuelled supply crunch that has pushed up prices across the country, Donald Trump's agriculture secretary has confirmed.
Brooke Rollins told reporters on Friday in Washington that imports from Türkiye and South Korea had already begun and that the White House was also in talks with other countries about temporarily importing their eggs.
"We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term," she added.
On the political battlefield, egg prices became an unlikely rallying point for Trump on the campaign trail as he sought to capitalise on voters' frustrations with the rising cost of essential items during his predecessor Joe Biden's presidency.
Eggocalypse
After returning to office in January, Trump tasked Rollins with the job of boosting the supply of eggs and bringing down prices.
In the weeks since, producers in several countries have reported American interest in their produce, with the Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations telling AFP that they had been approached by US diplomatic staff on the hunt for fresh eggs.
"There is a shortage of eggs in many countries," Katarzyna Gawronska, director of Poland's National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, said recently. "The key question would be what financial conditions would be offered by the Americans."
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Rollins said that imports of eggs would be time-limited and would stop once US poultry farmers were able to ramp up supply.
"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 move those eggs out onto the shelf," she said.
Egg prices are shattering records, with locals turning to alternatives — powdered eggs, plant-based substitutes, or simply eating fewer eggs altogether.
