The White House is working toward a plan to control the avian flu, which will help lower egg prices that have skyrocketed due to inflation and how the Biden administration "killed all the chickens" to contain the spread of the disease, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Sunday.
Hassett appeared on CBS’ "Face the Nation," where he said that he and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are "working with all the best people in government, including academics around the country and around the world" to have a plan ready for President Donald Trump next week regarding the disease.
"The Biden plan was to just, you know, kill chickens, and they spent billions of dollars just randomly killing chickens within a perimeter where they found a sick chicken," he said.
Hassett said the plan being worked on in the Trump administration is to "have better ways with biosecurity and medication and so on, to make sure that the perimeter doesn't have to kill the chickens."
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"So having a smart perimeter is what we're working on, and we're finalizing the ideas about how to do that with the best scientists in government," Hassett said. "And that's the kind of thing that should have happened a year ago, and if it had, then egg prices would be, you know, a lot better than they are now."
Hassett also addressed the "very large" inflation problem, which he attributed to former President Joe Biden.
"We saw the consumer price index come out, and we found out that the stagflation that was created by the policies of President Biden was way worse than we thought," Hassett said. "Over the last three months, across all goods, including eggs, the average inflation rate was 4.6%, way above target, and an acceleration at the end of the Biden term."
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Average egg prices have risen 15% since January and are up 53% year-over-year, according to the latest consumer price index, released Wednesday. The average price of a dozen Large Grade A eggs is nearing $5.00, as tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The White House has previously said the Biden administration contributed to the egg supply shortage by directing the killing of over 100 million chickens.
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Sources tell FOX Business the culling of infected flocks is current U.S. protocol, but more research and development is needed to control and even prevent outbreaks, such as vaccinating birds.
Fox Business’ Suzanne O’Halloran contributed to this report.
