While none of the Brazilian or broiler chicken eggs would wind up on grocery shelves, they could be used in processed foods such as cake mixes, ice cream or salad dressing, freeing up more fresh eggs for shoppers. Allowing use of broiler chicken eggs would require changing regulations, and some food safety experts warned that this could risk tainting food products with harmful bacteria.
The egg shortage has fueled food inflation even as Trump’s trade disputes have threatened to disrupt supply chains and raise costs for fresh produce and other goods.
U.S. egg imports from Brazil in February increased by 93% from a year earlier, the Brazilian Animal Protein Association said.
Currently, broiler chicken producers destroy millions of those eggs because they lack sufficient refrigeration to meet an FDA food-safety requirement.
“We need more yolks for folks,“ said U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, who is co-sponsoring a bill to allow the eggs to be used in food products.
Each year, broiler chickens lay about 360 million eggs that are not fit to hatch chicks, according to the council. Some are used to manufacture vaccines, exported or used for other purposes, the petition said, but most are destroyed.
Such eggs were once sold to egg-breaking plants to be pasteurized and used in processed foods. But in 2009, an FDA rule aimed at reducing illness from salmonella required eggs to be refrigerated at 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) starting 36 hours after they are laid.
The council said the eggs do not threaten public health because they are pasteurized. It said it was not aware of safety issues with them before the 2009 rule.
“There is a real possibility of trading off increased risk of foodborne illness for some proportion of eggs going into the egg products market,“ said Susan Mayne, who was director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition when it considered the previous petition.
The Trump administration in January allowed imports of Brazilian eggs for processing into food products for people, after they were previously only allowed for use in pet food, according to the Brazilian Animal Protein Association.
However, Brazil is affected by Newcastle disease, a virus that often kills poultry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said, and the country cannot supply the U.S. with eggs for sale in grocery stores or pasteurized liquid eggs for human consumption.
Nevada in February suspended a 2021 law requiring that all eggs sold in the state come from cage-free hens.
“A few years ago, the consumer was demanding a cage-free product,“ Bray said. “Now, the consumers’ eyes have been opened up a little bit as we’ve lost hundreds of millions of birds and egg prices are through the roof.”
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