Together, Let’s Keep Eggs In the Mix

The industry’s priority is maintaining a steady supply of safe, nutritious eggs for food manufacturers. Egg producers are using all their resources to fight highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and do everything possible to prevent disease on egg farms.

Since 2022, egg farmers have faced the loss of over 125 million laying hens across all 50 states, with more than 30 million in 2025 alone.¹ While the wild birds and migratory waterfowl that carry this disease have been a threat since the beginning of the outbreak in 2022, the lethal strain of HPAI detected in dairy cattle is an additional threat that was new in 2024.² HPAI is virulent and aggressive. It remains a clear and present risk to laying hen flocks.

Now entering its fourth year, HPAI is devastating to egg farms and the continued loss of flocks across the nation has significantly weakened U.S. egg production.³ The protracted duration of the outbreak has caused a cascade of disruptions to the nation’s egg supply—resulting in low-stock situations and volatility in egg pricing.³

Getting eggs to manufacturers remains a top priority, but egg production is complex, and ongoing cases have severely strained the system nationally, making the recovery process lengthier and more difficult for farms that have been impacted to return to production. Egg farmers are working with each other and with their teams to get eggs where needed and recover from HPAI on affected farms; however, with the limited availability of chicks and pullets (adolescent hens beginning their laying careers), recovery simply takes longer.

A perfect storm of factors—including evolving migration patterns for wild birds and waterfowl due to changing weather conditions, along with ongoing cases in dairy cattle—have exacerbated the challenges at a time when cage-free transitions and hen housing laws are going into effect. This has contributed to regional and customer-specific shortages.³

Egg farmers are fighting bird flu with all their resources and doing all they can to prevent the disease on their farms, but bird flu remains a clear and present threat to laying flocks. America’s egg farmers work around the clock to protect their hens and farms from bird flu and to ensure the safety of the nation’s egg supply.

Biosecurity—measures taken on farms to prevent disease—is a priority for farmers every day, not just during a disease outbreak, and egg farmers continue to innovate their biosecurity in response to developments in the environment..

Egg farmers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in expansive on-farm biosecurity facilities, practices and equipment. Farms have further enhanced biosecurity protocols in response to the recent HPAI outbreak in dairy cattle, and are sharing disease prevention information with dairy farmers, the USDA and state animal health officials.

There is close collaboration among those in the egg, chicken, turkey and dairy farming communities to identify ways to prevent HPAI from spreading. In addition, state and federal regulatory authorities are working hand-in-hand to limit the occurrence of this disease and to continue HPAI surveillance programs.

U.S. egg farms have some of the most stringent and comprehensive biosecurity measures on the planet, including, but not limited to:

• Restricting on-farm access to essential employees only.
• Limiting movement between farm operations.
• Supplying PPE to workers and requiring that protective gear always be used by anyone who enters egg farms.
• Use of Danish entry systems for poultry barns. Upon entry to a barn, employees remove outer clothing and footwear, shower/disinfect and move to a clean area where clean protective clothing is provided. The protocol is completed in reverse when exiting the building.
• Washing and sanitizing vehicles and equipment.
• Wild bird deterrence efforts.
• Employee training and awareness, including delivery drivers.
• Working closely with animal health experts and veterinarians to monitor flocks.

U.S. egg farms have some of the most stringent and comprehensive biosecurity measures in the world, but they are not foolproof. Beating HPAI requires a comprehensive response from industry, academia and government working together to identify innovative, more effective prevention and eradication measures.

The system of egg production is both complex and time sensitive, and the strain increases as we incur more losses, making it harder for affected egg farms to recover and get back to production. When an egg farm is impacted with HPAI, it must go through multiple steps with government approvals before it can repopulate new flocks. This alone can take a minimum of six months, at which point the farm must then begin to source new birds.

To ensure a consistent supply of eggs in the right sizes for market at any given time, egg farms operate on a staggered schedule, meaning that they are in a continual process of moving young hens who are just beginning their laying careers (“pullets,” which produce small and medium eggs) into production as flocks of older hens retire. One farm typically has multiple flocks of different ages housed in different barns.

The pullet population has been directly impacted by HPAI, so the availability of pullets is already strained. Moreover, under normal circumstances, egg farms order chicks on a schedule, typically years in advance. Those birds are then raised on a pullet farm until they’re ready to start their laying careers—a process that takes about 18-20 weeks. That system has also been disrupted with the need for so many additional birds to replace the ones that have been lost. As a result, it now takes an egg farm about nine months to more than a year to recover from an HPAI detection, and up to two full years to return to full production.

Wholesale egg prices are not set by farmers, but rather are determined based on supply and demand in the egg market, like other agricultural commodity products. The U.S. egg supply has been significantly strained by this extended, ongoing outbreak of bird flu, which has resulted in volatility in egg prices.

It’s important to remember that eggs have irreplaceable performance power. We know product and performance consistency as well as flavor contribution are highly essential for your manufacturing to keep running smoothly – and, in a recent study, CPG manufacturers agreed that’s where real eggs succeed, with all the functional and performance benefits to help you create stellar products.

U.S. egg producers are working together to fill manufacturer orders as they are able and doing what they can to develop alternate supply plans to address disruptions that may occur.

Unfortunately, egg prices and supply will continue to fluctuate as egg farms continue to be impacted by HPAI. Egg producers are doing everything they can to keep eggs supplied to manufacturers and to restore their farms to full production, but that takes time.

Egg production relies on a complex system, and ongoing cases of HPAI have put enormous stress on this system; the continued strain is having impacts on egg availability. The reality is the egg industry needs a sustained period with no additional HPAI detections on egg farms to stabilize supply and allow egg farms time to recover.

There are signs these stressors may continue to impact egg availability through the Easter season and into the summer; the egg industry remains committed to doing everything possible to address these supply disruptions.

Egg farmers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in biosecurity to keep this disease off their farms and protect their birds. Unfortunately, even the best biosecurity isn’t foolproof and farmers are aggressively pursuing new solutions. In the meantime, egg farmers are working closely with state and federal animal health officials in response to HPAI cases to contain the disease and return farms to production as quickly as they can.

Egg farmers are fighting an unprecedented threat in HPAI that requires an extraordinary response. Together with partners across agriculture, in academia and with the federal and state governments, egg farmers are working around the clock to address this unprecedented systemic disruption, find collaborative, actionable solutions to limit HPAI’s impact on the nation’s egg farms and fully restore our national production capacity and egg supply.