Does the U.S. administration have egg on their faces?
Well, probably not literally, since they likely can’t afford to waste a mouthful these days.
But amid an outbreak of bird flu in laying hens that led to a severe egg shortage causing egg prices at grocery stores to hit record highs, the U.S. government is now looking to Europe for new export markets. And experts say that might prove challenging.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins “is committed to lowering egg prices for consumers and is actively exploring all options, including trade opportunities,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), told CBC News.
The USDA has approached Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden, among other nations, to address the shortage, according to European industry groups. They’ve also contacted Austria, Norway, Spain and Denmark — where, in the latter case, diplomatic relations have recently soured as U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly suggests the U.S. should control its territory of Greenland.
Egg prices in the U.S. have soared recently, largely because of a shortage caused by avian-flu outbreaks. It’s forced some businesses to raise prices and even rent chickens to manage the situation.
This move isn’t without complications and political tensions over the myriad import tariffs Trump has imposed or threatened to impose on his nation’s top trading partners, including Canada. But Easter is on the way, and demand for those expensive and elusive shelled eggs is climbing.
Last week, the USDA announced it had secured “new egg import commitments” from Turkey and South Korea.
The U.S. made its appeal for foreign eggs amid a significant deficit, according to The Associated Press. Last month, the country produced 720 million fewer table eggs than in February 2024, a decline of nearly 10 per cent.
Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly boasted that the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada. Which raises the question: have they asked us for eggs? And the answer is: No.
“Canada has not received any request to export shelled eggs to the United States,” a spokesperson for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada told CBC News.
Canada’s egg supply
There’s likely a couple of reasons for that, according to Michael von Massow, a professor of food agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The first is just the current Canada-U.S. relationship, von Massow told CBC News, a nod to the current trade war and Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st state.
But more than that, especially considering the U.S. asked Denmark, it probably comes down to the scale of Canada’s industry, he explained.
“We don’t have a whole lot of extra eggs.”
The American egg production industry is more than ten times larger than Canada’s industry, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada explained.
“Their needs far exceed our production capacity,” the department noted.
Canada produced 856 million dozen eggs in 2024, according to the Egg Farmers of Canada’s recently released Annual General Report. The U.S. produced about nine billion dozen eggs that same year, according to the USDA’s annual Chickens and Eggs report.
Since the beginning of 2024, over 70 million laying hens were affected by High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI, or bird flu) in the U.S., working out to about 19 per cent of U.S. production, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The number of birds that had to be depopulated in the U.S. represents almost three times the population of Canada’s laying hens, the added.
And it’s not as if Canada could just ramp up its supply even if the U.S. did ask for help, von Massow said. You have to remember that eggs are a biological production process — we only have so many barns and there’s a time lag in getting chickens to lay eggs, plus Canada’s industry operates under a supply-management system, he explained.
“It’s just not a viable option,” he said.
Challenges include chicken feathers and poop
But it’s a tricky time for the U.S. to be asking for help abroad, von Massow said. And not just because the approach of Easter means Europeans are seeing their own domestic demand spike.
“The Europeans aren’t necessarily happy with Americans right now, either,” he said.
Even if they were eager to share, European countries don’t have many surplus eggs because of their own avian flu outbreaks.
One of the biggest obstacles, however, is the approach the U.S. takes to preventing salmonella contamination.
U.S. food safety regulations require fresh eggs to be sanitized and refrigerated before they reach shoppers; in the European Union, safety standards call for Grade A eggs to be sold unwashed and without extended chilling.
It is common in parts of Europe, for example, for consumers to buy eggs that still have feathers and chicken poop stuck to them, the AP reports.
Meanwhile, the U.S. market is starting to show signs of improvement, with wholesale prices for eggs starting to decrease, according to the USDA’s weekly egg markets overview. Assuming no new HPAI outbreaks, wholesale prices are anticipated to fall with a forecasted average of $4.24 US per dozen for the year, according to the USDA.
That said, if Canada did have the supply, and the U.S. did ask them for help, von Massow said Canada would probably step up. Current relationship aside, Canada hasn’t shown any sign of wanting to hurt its own exports and continues to ship other products to the U.S., he added.
“If we had the eggs, I suspect Canada would sell them the eggs.”
