The US has contacted Denmark and other European countries, including Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, asking them to export eggs as Americans face egg shortages and soaring prices due to the bird flu outbreak, the Danish Egg Association said on Friday, reports Reuters and Finnish broadcaster Yle.
The US Department of Agriculture’s request coincides with a series of new US tariffs imposed on countries including the EU. President Donald Trump has also threatened to annex Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
Trump promised to cut egg prices on his first day in office, but in February, the first full month of the Trump administration, prices are up 59% compared to the previous year.
THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE’S REPRESENTATIVE IN EUROPE SENT AN OFFICIAL REQUEST TO EGG-PRODUCING COUNTRIES AT THE END OF FEBRUARY
to obtain information on their capacity and willingness to export eggs to the American market.
“We are still awaiting guidance from Washington on next steps, but do you have an estimate of the number of eggs that could be supplied to the US (assuming they meet all import requirements)?” said the letter to the Danish Egg Association in early March. “Washington is trying to get an estimate of the quantity that could be received.”
The Danish Egg Association said it would look into it, but said there was no surplus of eggs in Europe, adding that “there is a worldwide shortage of eggs as consumption is increasing and many are affected by bird flu”.
Its spokesman said that they had requested more details on the terms of such an agreement, stressing that exporting eggs to the US is complicated by hygiene and other factors.
The Finnish Poultry Association indicated that it had also been contacted about the export of eggs to the US. The Executive Director of the organisation, Veera Lehtilä, indicated that the export of eggs is currently not possible as no market access negotiations have taken place with the US authorities.
She said that even if Finland could start exporting, which would be after a lengthy process involving extensive testing and research as Finland never have had egg export agreement with the US, “the amount we could export would not solve the US egg shortage”.
One of Sweden’s largest egg producers, Kronägg, indicated that it was unlikely to export eggs to the US as this would be difficult due to various export restrictions.
Turkey announced in February that it had started exporting around 15 000 tonnes of eggs to the US.
Europe is also facing a shortage of eggs because bird flu is not just an American problem, it is a serious global problem and needs to be continuously worked on, Lehtila said, adding that “Finland has so far coped with it well”.
Meanwhile, Politico reports that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has started sounding the alarm over the rapidly growing bird flu crisis as the highly contagious avian influenza virus (H5N1) increasingly spreads from poultry to mammals. This raises concerns about both food availability and the possible transmission of the disease to humans.
The virus, first detected in China in 1996, has led to massive culling of chickens and birds worldwide, with Europe losing 47.7 million farm birds during the 2021-2022 epidemic and the US having already culled at least 166 million birds since the start of the most recent outbreak.