Then-President Joe Biden claimed victory in 2023 when egg prices fell by 22%, after tripling during his first two years in office. But Biden left his successor, President Donald Trump, a poultry price fiasco.
The egg price spikes helped crack the chances of a Democratic victory in 2024. Egg prices became a symbol of stubbornly high inflation and a potent political symbol for Trump in his winning a second, nonconsecutive term.
Government statistics confirmed what voters already knew — the oval staples of so many food dishes and diets were out of control. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average price of a dozen eggs rose by 66% during Biden’s last year in office. Trump inherited a near-record high average of $4.15 for a dozen eggs, per the BLS’s last recorded finding, in December 2024.
Although the Agriculture Department anticipates overall food price inflation to hew to the Federal Reserve’s 2% annual inflation target, the agency predicts that egg prices will soar another 20% throughout 2025. The culprit is the spread of avian flu on Biden’s watch. Unless Trump can figure out how to undo the damage, consumers will pay the price.
The H5N1 bird flu that has spurred our egg inflation situation has plagued American poultry since the start of 2022. Because it’s a naturally evolving pathogen and not a Chinese Communist Party experiment that leaked from a virology lab, this avian flu carries little direct risk to humans.
Avian flu, though, is a giant risk to people’s economic well-being. As Trump’s 2024 victory proved, panic over prices is a powerful political force. Of the 136 million birds affected by H5N1 in the past three years, nearly 16 million were in January alone.
On top of the 13 million egg-laying hens lost to the flu in December 2024, the virus culled another 8.3 million hens in the first four weeks of 2025. The virus, which had never jumped from bird to cattle before this outbreak, has also affected at least 1,000 cows that we know of, risking future daily prices.
That’s naturally driven up egg prices significantly. And it’s a trend Trump has a chance to reverse, ultimately bringing down costs significantly. Trump, for one thing, must do what Biden did not — allow American farmers to vaccinate their poultry. Unlike another epidemic in recent memory, neither Trump nor Biden has had to create a vaccine for this avian flu from scratch.
Other countries have already been vaccinating their chickens for nearly a year now. And USDA officials under Biden already said five vaccine candidates the department tested back in 2023 “reduced oral and cloacal virus shedding significantly and provided near 100% clinical protection in chickens.”
Still, the Biden administration refused to execute a vaccination campaign out of its own, correctly perceived position of weakness in global markets.
You see, agricultural trade agreements are bilateral by design to account for the incredibly specific customs stipulations of each country’s food, drug, and wildlife policies. Biden administration officials said the vaccination campaign would threaten our $6 billion poultry export industry, even though leading farmers, such as Rose Acre Farms, the nation’s second-largest egg producer, were begging the White House to allow chicken vaccinations in August 2024.
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The Trump administration can change that policy now, by demanding that other countries continue to accept vaccinated chickens from the United States. A 20% tariff ought to add plenty of incentive.
The Biden administration had to spend more than $1 billion in compensation costs to farmers who had to kill their coops. A vaccination campaign would likely be cheaper for the Trump administration and, more importantly, better for egg-buyers.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
