As egg prices soar, Trump administration targets California law and H5N1 bird flu

As egg prices continue to skyrocket due to continuing outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has announced a multi-pronged strategy to fight the disease — including an effort to dismantle a popular animal welfare law California voters approved in 2018.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote that egg prices had jumped 237% since January 2021 — rising from a national average of $1.47 per dozen to $4.95 for a dozen eggs — and laid blame on bird flu and the Biden Administration.

In order to “restore stability to the egg market over the next three to six months,” Rollins said the USDA will invest nearly $1 billion “to curb this crisis and make eggs affordable again.”

With help from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the USDA will cut “hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending,” and redirect those funds toward “long-term solutions to avian flu,” Rollins wrote. Those efforts will include investing in new biosecurity measures, providing financial relief for farmers who have lost their flocks, and exploring “vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens.”

And, in California — where the average price of a dozen eggs has reached almost $9 — the agency will target Proposition 12, which Rollins described as “overly restrictive.”

Known as the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, the 2018 ballot measure establishes minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, breeding pigs and calves raised for veal.

The law bans California businesses from selling eggs from chickens that don’t meet the requirements — thus forcing both California farmers and out-of-state suppliers to conform to the law. Although in 2021 the law was challenged by the North American Meat Institute — which argued that the law violated the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution — the lawsuit was rejected by U.S. Supreme Court.

The prospect of eliminating the law has raised concern among some farmers, researchers and legal scholars.

Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, said that while he and his organization “applaud” Rollins and the Trump administration for their commitment to combatting bird flu across all poultry species, they found the comments about Proposition 12 concerning.

Mattos said California egg farmers have spent millions of dollars over the last several years to upgrade and adapt their farms. Reversing the law would put California poultry farmers — and all the other egg producers that sell to California — at a huge economic disadvantage. He said most egg farms are now cage free, making the situation untenable for the majority of poultry operations. They’d have to invest millions more dollars to buy cages and re-adapt their facilities for such operations, he said.

“This is not a constructive solution against bird flu, but a plan of dissolution for a massive portion of an accepted and mainstream production strategy of the American egg industry,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. He said that several states, including Massachusetts, Nevada and Colorado, have similar laws.

Maurice Pitesky, a veterinarian and UC Davis poultry expert, said he wasn’t surprised that the USDA targeted Proposition 12.

He said it’s simple economics: The law reduces supply, and as a consequence, prices go up. “California can’t provide more supply as easily as states that don’t have these welfare laws,” he said.

But without an act from Congress, there’s not much the agency can do, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s Law School.

Congress could pass a federal statute that preempts state law, “including a state law that’s adopted by the voters through initiative,” he said. Alternatively, it could give the USDA authority to preempt the law.

But would changing the law actually have any effect on the supply or price of eggs?

Daniel Sumner, professor of agriculture and resource economics at UC Davis, doesn’t think so.

“Prop. 12 is mostly irrelevant to bird flu impacts and bird flu is mostly irrelevant to Prop. 12 impacts,” he said in an email.

“A generation ago, California was a big egg state and shipped eggs out,” he said. But egg production in the state has gradually declined. In 2024, California produced between 3% or 4% of US eggs and 10% of cage-free eggs, which accounts for about one-third of all US eggs. He said 70% of eggs consumed in California are imported from other states.

And he said there’s no indication that cage-free flocks are more or less vulnerable to the virus.

In December, a disproportionate share of US bird flu outbreaks occurred in cage-free flocks and in California, he said. But in January, it was mostly cage-housed flocks in states such as Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina that got clobbered.

The law does, however, make California consumers “more prone to price spikes because when bird flu does hit cage-free flocks harder, consumers here do not have the option to shift to eggs from caged flocks. More choice reduces price flux.”