In the 2024 election, the price of eggs became a symbol of inflation. The Trump campaign often placed the blame for these rising costs on the Biden administration, with then vice presidential candidate JD Vance saying, “Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you around $4.”
In Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address on March 4, he made little mention of the price of eggs, saying only that “Joe Biden especially let the prices of eggs get out of control” and “the egg prices are out of control and we’re working hard to get it down.”
Neither Joe Biden, Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump (for now) is to blame for the rising cost of eggs. The major culprit is the H5N1 strain of influenza, or bird flu. Since the current strain of bird flu reached the United States in 2022, there have been positive tests in over 1,500 commercial and backyard flocks across all 50 states. When one bird in a flock tests positive for the virus, the entire flock is euthanized. Over 168 million birds in contact with the virus have been euthanized to help contain the spread, as bird flu is highly transmissible within flocks and results in serious illness and death in many cases. Fewer poultry means fewer eggs, and fewer eggs mean higher egg costs.
Additionally, bird flu is transmissible from infected birds to humans, cattle and potentially other animals. Since the outbreak began, nearly 1,000 dairy herds have been affected, and there have been 70 human cases. While most of the recent human cases in the United States have been mild, with only one resulting in death, bird flu has historically been very deadly with around a 50% death rate. Currently, there is a low risk of person-to-person transmission of bird flu, but scientists believe this risk is increasing. Evolutionary virologist Daniel Goldhill says, “If the virus has adapted to cows, it is also better adapted to go into human cells.”
The risk that bird flu poses to public health is severe, and the drastic measures being taken to curtail its spread are necessary. Paying a few extra dollars for eggs is well worth avoiding the threat of another pandemic. However, while the Trump administration has emphasized lowering the price of eggs, the administration’s shortcomings in responding to bird flu may have the opposite effect.
In one of its early rounds of cuts, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, mistakenly fired Agriculture Department workers working on bird flu. This week, the administration has orchestrated mass layoffs of around 20,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, including staff at the US Food and Drug Administration working on the bird flu response.
In its final days, the Biden administration issued a contract with Moderna to test a vaccine for bird flu, in case avian flu were to lead to a pandemic. However, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services is re-evaluating this contract, jeopardizing vaccine trials and the vaccine itself.
When cows are infected with bird flu, the virus can be transmitted through their unpasteurized milk. While food scientists and public health professionals strongly advise against the consumption of raw unpasteurized milk due to the risk of contracting infectious diseases like bird flu, the Trump-appointed head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., is a proponent of raw milk, claiming that it “advances human health.”
While it is easy to blame the inflation of egg prices on the current administration, the spread of bird flu, which is responsible for much of the rising costs, is out of their control. However, what the administration can control is its public health response. There is nothing ‘efficient’ or ‘low cost’ about firing government officials working to prevent the spread of bird flu, putting vaccine trials in jeopardy and appointing uninformed, unqualified public health leaders. If Trump truly wants to lower the price of eggs, he needs to let scientists and public health professionals execute their work without political interference. Undermining scientific expertise and disrupting efforts to contain outbreaks will lead to greater economic losses, higher prices and potential human health risks.