WASHINGTON — The National Chicken Council (NCC) petitioned the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to allow surplus eggs from broilers to be processed into egg products under the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) jurisdiction.

On Feb. 20, NCC wrote to FDA Acting Commissioner Sara Brenner, asking her to either reverse or modify regulations implemented during the Obama administration that prohibit broiler eggs from entering the US food supply.

As the current highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak is exasperating egg prices due to a tight egg supply, NCC’s petition looks to alleviate the pressure by utilizing “perfectly nutritious and safe eggs” rather than discarding them, the group said.

“With government risk assessments affirming their safety, and the fact that surplus broiler hatching eggs would be pasteurized (cooked), we respectfully request FDA to immediately exercise its enforcement discretion to allow these eggs to be sent for breaking, helping to ease costs and inflationary pressures for consumers,” said Ashley Peterson, NCC senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs.

Early on in the current HPAI outbreak, NCC had petitioned the FDA on the same issue, but it was rejected by the Biden administration in 2023.

If NCC’s request were granted, nearly 400 million eggs would enter the egg-breaking supply each year, which would help reserve the currently coveted table eggs from being used as ingredients in items like salad dressings, bread, pasta, mayonnaise, sauces and other everyday food products.

“Is this a silver bullet that will bring down the cost of eggs tomorrow? No,” Peterson said, “but it is one option that could be part of a broader plan to help relieve some pressure on the egg supply as the situation worsens. And it’s just common sense we shouldn’t be throwing away eggs at a time like this, especially when the government says they’re safe.”

The surplus NCC refers to would come from broiler hatcheries whenever a chicken producer yields more eggs than they wish hatch. These eggs used to be sold to egg processors to be pasteurized and used in egg products before the FDA implemented a new rule in 2009 prohibiting the use of surplus eggs. The rule stated that all eggs sent anywhere in the US food supply must be kept at 45°F within 36 hours after being laid. NCC pointed out that, while the rule was focused primarily on the food safety of table eggs, the regulation affected any kind of egg in the food supply.

Broiler eggs are stored in a room at 65°F before they are placed in incubators to be hatched. NCC said research has indicated this to be the ideal temperature to store these eggs prior to incubation. However, doing so with the current rule in place means the elimination of broiler eggs from potentially contributing to the US egg supply even if they have been pasteurized.

A 2020 study from the FDA and USDA in a joint risk assessment confirmed that the pasteurized egg products present low public risk due to the “extremely high pasteurization efficiency” of the egg breaking pasteurization process.

After implementation of the 2009 FDA rule, broiler producers stopped selling surplus hatching eggs to egg breakers and instead either rendered or threw the eggs away, often at an additional cost, NCC said. The group estimated that since 2009 over 5.4 billion eggs have been wasted and sent to landfills at a cost to the broiler industry of $27 million annually, for a total of $350 million.