Trump official: Americans should raise 'backyard' chickens if they're mad about egg prices

During an outbreak of avian flu that has caused egg prices to skyrocket, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested a creative solution for those struggling with rising costs, especially in light of President Donald Trump’s promise to stabilize grocery prices.

Appearing on Fox News over the weekend, she advised people to consider raising chickens in their backyards

"I have chickens in my backyard, and Sean started that, and yesterday I went out, they just started laying, and yesterday I got five eggs," the anchor told Rollins. "Is part of the solution more small farms, because when avian flu hits, and you have these giant industrial farms, and these chickens which — I don't think the eggs are as good anyway. Is part of it just investing in smaller farms, encouraging that?"

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"I think the silver lining in all of this is, how do we, in our backyards — we've got chickens too in our backyard — how do we solve for something like this?" said Rollins, who previously served as a policy adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "And people are sort of looking around thinking, 'Wow, well maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard,' and it's awesome, I agree with you."

Aside from the expense of keeping chickens and the fact that not all neighborhoods allow it even in Rollins' home state, small-scale and community or neighborhood farming is inherently never going to produce food products at a competitive cost with larger-scale farming; this issue is frequently debated with vegetable gardening, which is not a sustainable food practice and exists mostly as a hobby in developed countries.

The Trump administration has sought to blame former President Joe Biden for soaring egg prices as well, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that administration ordered a "mass killing" of chickens — omitting that this was done to prevent the spread of a dangerous influenza strain that scientists fear is capable of a global pandemic and millions of deaths if it mutates to become easily human-transmissible.

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