WASHINGTON: The United States will import eggs from Turkiye and South Korea to ease an avian flu-fuelled supply crunch that has pushed up prices across the country, the agriculture secretary said on Friday.

Brooke Rollins told reporters in Washington that imports from Turkiye 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.

The cost of eggs has skyrocketed due to multiple bird flu outbreaks in the United States, forcing farmers to cull 30 million birds and sharply constraining supply.

On the political battlefield, egg prices became an unlikely rallying point for President Donald 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.

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 saying 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.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2025