Latest Update (1 June) from USDA 44,994,993 birds affected.

American poultry farmers are dealing with the worse outbreak of avian flu on record. To date over 41 million birds have been infected and the vast majority of them are egg-laying hens. In Iowa, the country's top egg-producing state, over 26 million birds have been destroyed. Nearly one in five eggs consumed in the United States comes from Iowa and it is estimated that over 10% of the entire US egg supply has been hit by the disease.

Farmers hit by the disease are faced with a three week wait before they can restock their barns to ensure that the virus is completed eliminated from the holdings. The disposal of so many carcasses is also causing a problem with tales of “mounds and mounds of carcasses piled up in vast barns” awaiting disposal.

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Egg prices rocket

Since the outbreak, the general market price of standard eggs in the US has increased from $1.19 to $2.03. An industry group of U.S. bankers has begun campaigning for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Congress to accelerate their approvals on egg imports.

"We have members whose egg suppliers are already cutting back how much they'll receive in the next few weeks, while others are not getting any," Cory Martin, vice president of government relations for the American Bakers Association, told Reuters. "They're looking for eggs everywhere. And the problem is, too, there's not enough egg substitute available right now to make up for the demand." A spokeswoman for Archer Daniels Midland Co. said that the company has received numerous inquiries from manufacturers about the plant-based egg substitutes it makes.

However, companies that are looking for imported eggs may have to do business outside of North America.

"Canada is short on eggs and has been buying heavily from the U.S. for the last several years," said Rick Brown, a senior vice president of Urner Barry, a commodity market analysis firm. "Mexico has been dealing with its own outbreaks of avian influenza, so they're banned from importing into the U.S. The logical place people will be looking now would be Europe.


“The U.S. has never imported any significant amount of eggs because we’ve always been a very low-cost producer,” said Tom Elam of FarmEcon, an agricultural consulting company. “Now, that’s no longer the case.”

Opportunity for European egg producers

Avril, a farmer-controlled agri-food group that owns France’s largest egg brand, Matines, said it has noticed an increase recently in demand from the United States and elsewhere in the Americas and it plans to start making shipments in June.

Andrew Rosenzweig, international sales manager at OvoMarket Espana, an egg exporting company that represents Spanish egg farms  says "The U.S. market  are most certainly very nervous about the evolution of this unprecedented problem," says. "Given that the influenza has also affected breeding farms...the production forecast is disconcerting.  A hen does not start laying eggs until it’s [about] 20 weeks old, but the big question is how long will it take for the USA to replace the layers that have been lost?"

European egg processors are "in full production to take up the U.S.’s global slack," Rosenzweig says, noting his firm has received inquiries about eggs from Mexico and asked whether OvoMarket can serve clients in Hong Kong.  

British Egg Industry Council told Farming Online that,  ‘UK egg producers look at all opportunities to export British eggs but we cannot comment on specific cases.’

The International Egg Commission (IEC) Chairman Cesar de Anda and IEC Director General Julian Madeley will meet with a top level OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) delegation to address egg industry issues over the current avian influenza outbreak in North America.

This urgent meeting has been arranged to push for co-ordinated action on avian influenza including supporting action on 'Compartmentalisation' in affected areas, and is one of the immediate steps being implemented as part of the IEC’s Avian Influenza Action Plan.

Goldman Sachs analysts predict that US consumers will spend a further $7.5bn-$8bn (£4.8bn-£5.2bn) because of the egg shortage.