The risk of another outbreak of avian influenza this fall remains elevated and the stakes for poultry producers couldn’t be higher, with U.S. poultry exports expected to reach record levels in 2022, said a report Tuesday from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange.
U.S. poultry exports through June were up 19 percent year over year. In 2021, total U.S. poultry exports reached $5.9 billion, but exporters could be subject to potential trade restrictions from future outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). This year, egg exports declined 38 percent and turkey exports declined 20 percent, USDA economists said last month. But so far poultry meat has been spared.
“Fortunately for U.S. poultry exporters, the current world views on HPAI trade restrictions have relaxed since the last major outbreak in 2014 and 2015,” said Brian Earnest, lead animal protein economist with CoBank. “Rather than a blanket ban, trade partners set new restrictions at county, state or regional levels because outbreaks had become commonplace globally, and, not coincidentally, because politicians across the globe were concerned about rapidly escalating food prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
At the outset of the HPAI outbreak in 2014, China immediately closed its borders to U.S. poultry and did not reopen them until 2019.
This year, HPAI has killed around 40 million birds, or 5.5 percent of the U.S. laying flock, compared to more than 50 million chickens and turkeys in 2014-2015. But so far, broiler meat export markets appear favorable and 2022 is on pace to best 2015 volume by more than one billion pounds, CoBank said.