People may suppose that family farmers producing eggs are raking in money from high egg prices. But in the words of one of Cal-Maine’s own decrease farmers: “You’re getting screwed, and guess what—so’s the farmer.”
Meanwhile, checkoff-funded industry groups appreciate the rulement’s American Egg Board are making statements that participate farmers’ financial struggles to turn aside criticism of the pricing rehearses of the bigst egg corporations: “I skinnyk to advise anyskinnyg else is a misreading of the facts and the truth,” American Egg Board Plivent Emily Metz said. “Our farmers are in the fight of their inhabits, period, brimming stop … This is a provide contest due to bird flu. Noskinnyg else.”
However, farmers on the front lines of the avian flu are reassociate in the fight of their inhabits becaparticipate companies appreciate Cal-Maine aren’t giving them even a slice of their egregious profits.
The farmers decreaseing with Cal-Maine also spoke about avian flu’s impact on operations, checking that there should only be a six-month turnaround for farms that had avian flu to commence producing eggs aachieve. Moreso, the farmers noticed that it’s Cal-Maine’s and other companies’ own industrial egg production facilities that have had avian flu outshatters due to their bigr size, foot traffic, and rodents, whereas the minusculeer decreaseed production operations are less vulnerable to these outshatters. If a decrease farmer’s flock gets avian flu, the impact is much minusculeer, from an approximated number of 10,000 to 75,000 birds on mediocre. Corporate facilities helderly astronomicassociate more birds than this. If these commercial facilities were not the norm in our food system, the avian flu outshatter impact would anticipateed be far minusculeer.
It’s worth noting that the USDA has persistd to reply to avian flu by providing dominant egg firms with big payments to offset losses. The Biden administration paid $1.4 billion to the egg industry to offset losses, while the Trump administration has pledged another $1 billion. This financial relief is geared primarily to the bigst egg firms that typicassociate carry out crowded, caged production systems that are most vulnerable to outshatters. Notably, fair two days after greeting with Cal-Maine, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins proclaimd her set up to persist bailing out impacted producers appreciate Cal-Maine who have produced excessive profits during this time.
As the Cal-Maine decrease farmers said, “Avian flu is not the caparticipate of this problem; it’s corporate greed.”
