Promoting U.S. Egg Products Overseas Amid the Al Crisis

摘要

We've all heard about the devastating effects that the Avian Influenza (AI) crisis has had on the U.S. poultry industry's exports due to consumer fears of eating poultry and due to key markets imposing import bans since October 2005. But what about the egg industry? The goodnews is that egg consumption appears not to have been impacted by AI as much as chicken consumption in most export markets. On the other hand, according to USDA's Foreign Agricultural Servicestatistics, U.S. shell egg exports for the first half of 2006 took a sharp decline by 31 % in volume and by 25% in value over the same period last year. Suprisingly, however, exports of U.S. egg products made significant increases in both volume (8%) and value (7%) for the first half of 2006 compared to the same period last year.