McDonald Rivet Introduces Bill to Lower Egg Prices

FLINT— Congresswoman Kristen McDonald Rivet (MI-08), Congressman Josh Riley (NY-19), Congressman Pat Harrigan (NC-10), and Congressman Dusty Johnson (SD-AL) introduced the bipartisan Lowering Egg Prices Act to lower egg prices for consumers by cutting bureaucratic red tape that forces farmers to discard hundreds of millions of eggs each year.

“The consistently rising cost of groceries continues to make things exceptionally hard for families in Michigan, and we need to do something about it. One solution we're putting forward is to get more eggs into the supply chain, which will bring down the prices you see at your grocery store,” said Congresswoman McDonald Rivet. “We have to use every tool in the bag to put more money back in the pockets of working Michiganders.”

In 2009, a rule was enacted which requires the chicken industry to discard eggs that don’t meet certain refrigeration requirements. Those requirements make sense for table eggs, which are raw products, but the rule makes less sense for breaker eggs, which are pasteurized and then used in products like pasta, cake mix, and salad dressing. 

This has forced chicken farmers to throw away nearly 400 million eggs each year. The Lowering Egg Prices Act would overturn the regulation and put hundreds of millions more breaker eggs on the market, enabling more table eggs to stock supermarket shelves.