“Trump's bird flu plan will get egg prices down fast.”

Public remarks accompanying the administration's bird flu plan release

After Trump promised fast relief, egg prices instead climbed to the highest level ever recorded. The USDA's own data showed a dozen large Grade A eggs hitting a record $6.23 in March 2025, up from $4.95 that January, and far above the $2-$3 range that prevailed for most of the prior administration. When Trump unveiled the plan in late February 2025, the USDA was projecting egg prices could rise another 41% over the course of the year, not fall fast.

The price spike was driven by avian influenza biology, not policy. More than 168 million birds, most of them egg-laying hens, had been culled since the outbreak began in 2022, with over 30 million killed in the first three months of 2025 alone. Trump's plan kept the same USDA-required culling of infected flocks that operated under Biden; its new spending ($500 million for biosecurity, $400 million in farmer aid, $100 million toward vaccines) was aimed at the long-term outbreak, not at any mechanism that could cut retail prices within weeks.

Prices did eventually fall later in 2025 (wholesale egg prices dropped 64% and retail prices 27% from the peak by June 2025), but that decline tracked the natural easing of the bird flu outbreak, not the rapid policy fix Trump promised. The prediction that the plan would get prices down fast was false in the near term: prices first surged to an all-time high. "Retail egg prices reached $6.23 for a dozen large, Grade A eggs in March 2025 — the highest price ever recorded." — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / USDA data, reported by PBS News