[Music] Welcome to our webinar. We will begin shortly. [Music] [Music] Welcome to our webinar. We will begin shortly. [Music] [Music] Hello and welcome to Eggs in Focus, a webinar on the egg industry outlook. My name is Jessica Vishan and I am the associate director of communications for the Independent Grocerers Alliance, also known as IGA. Today's webinar is brought to you by the Independent Grocerers Alliance and the American Egg Board, also known as AEB. We all know that eggs have been in the headlines from pricing surges to concerns around aven flu, but what is next for the category? Well, today we're going to look at how independent grocerers like you can stay informed, nimble, and connected to your communities using new shopper focused campaigns. A little housekeeping up front. This is a pre-recorded webinar, so if you have any questions, please enter them in the chat. I think right here. Uh we will address each of them in a follow-up email to all who registered for the webinar, which should arrive in your inbox in the next few days, along with the webinar recording itself. And with that, I am thrilled to introduce our guests, Dana Lonzac from the American Egg Board and Nate Hedkkey from the American Egg Board. Welcome, Dana and Nate. Thank you so much, Jessica. It's great to be here and uh looking forward to talking with everybody. Um I'm going to spend a little bit of time giving folks an update on the industry, the state of the industry. There's obviously been a lot going on with bird flu, so I want to kind of update everybody on that and and really what the industry's been doing to create a more resilient egg supply. And then I'm going to turn it over to Dana who is going to walk you through some great resources that we have uh to help you drive uh growth in your business. Um, before I jump in, for those that aren't familiar, I just want to talk for a second about what the American Egg Board is. We we're the national marketing organization for the US egg industry. So, we support US egg farmers. We get all of our funding from US egg farmers and our focus is all about driving the demand for egg and egg products. Uh, and we do that through a variety of different means, research, education, marketing, those types of programs. through that. We also have a lot of resources that are available to you and and our channel partners. Uh a lot of resource a lot of great resources like consumer insights. We have a lot of proprietary research studies um on on eggs. Uh marketing support um egg nutrition. So this has been a big area of focus of ours. Um we have resources around innovation to help develop new products uh sustainability and more. So, I would encourage you um to reach out to Dana and she could share more information as it relates to these great resources that can help your business. So, um I want to jump in and and just kind of level set on the the state of the industry because again uh it's been a very dynamic industry for the last uh 12 months in in particular. And I don't I don't think I need to kind of go back in time and give a h give a history lesson on bird flu because by now everybody's been impacted in some form or fashion. Um you can see the numbers here, but it's been very devastating uh to our farmers. Um if you look at these numbers in the context of an average annual flock size of 320 to 330 million birds, you can see that it's a significant loss uh that has occurred as a result of uh aven influenza. Um I'll speak on the next slide about some good news where we have seen some relief. Um and so there are positives happening. Um the current flock size is around 288 million and I and I point that out because it is increasing. It kind of bottomed out uh a little below 280. So you see um production has been increasing. The number of hens in the market are increasing and the economists that we work with are forecasting that um we should be back at or above 300 million by the end of the year. Now, the big caveat to that would be um we don't know what will happen in the fall when the birds start to migrate again. So, again, I do want to caveat that, but I think I think things are improving um across the board. And there's a number of factors that are really driving um some of the relief that we've been seeing. First and foremost, um we have seen a a significant slow in in significant outbreaks over the last couple months. Um you know, it says since May, honestly, we we had a a big outbreak where we lost four to five million birds in Arizona in May, but if you exclude that, we really haven't seen any significant outbreaks since March. Uh so things have gotten better. We got through the spring wild migration um uh pretty cleanly and as I said a minute ago I I I think you know we're waiting to see what the fall might bring but um but so far so good. Um we've also seen consumer demand soft and I I have a slide later in the deck so I won't dive into this just yet but that has certainly helped provide some relief. And then US imports have um increased significantly. Um in May alone we saw um over four and a half times the level of imports of egg and egg ingredients compared to last year. And that's on top of you know high high import numbers in in the April and and March time frame as well. So while these imports on a percent of US production are relatively small they are helping to further stabilize. So all of this has has really led to egg prices coming down and as hopefully you know you have all seen um wholesale egg prices are down over 60% from uh record highs that we saw in Q1 and um and we would expect that to you know continue to to soften a little bit as we see production um increase. Um, I recognize that you can't necessarily read this slide, but this is a graphic that we have available as as as part of our our toolbox. And and really, it's meant to help um explain that it's not an easy process to repopulate. A big question that I get is why are things taking so long? Why is it taking so long for farms who are impacted by a influenza to get back up and running and and to to be producing eggs again? And it it's just it's not an easy process. It's a lengthy process. And and because the supply chain is so constrained, it's only gotten longer. What used to be a six-month process of repopulating a farm is now uh 12 months or longer. And so I think it's just important to remember that that while there are um progress is being made and there's some great signs that the industry continues to stabilize, I think it's important for folks to know that it is a lengthy process and and so as we think about the the US egg market in total um because of this um we're still looking out into 2026 until we get back to to full production. Um but again, as long as the the outbreaks uh remain um kind of where they've been recently, if that can continue, uh we're very optimistic that um we can go into 2026 and and and start to get back to full production. So I want to transition to what the industry's been doing about bird flu because I think it's not only um you know it's not only been a focus to increase production in the short term to provide relief but I think longer term it is about how do we stabilize and and build a more resilient supply chain so you don't have as many fluctuations longer term. And so um you know first I would like to you know just kind of express the gratitude that the industry has for the support that we've gotten from the the government. Um the USDA put a five-prong strategy in place uh in the first quarter of this year to help the industry combat bird flu. You can see the five strategies here and I'm going to go into more detail on a couple of these on subsequent slides. But um at the end of the day, it has been a very collaborative effort and we're very appreciative for the fact that it's not just the egg industry, uh American Egg Board, United Egg Producers, um fighting this this battle alone. Um so let me just touch on a couple of the ones that I think are are probably most relevant and and first and foremost, uh biocurity. Th this remains the number one defense against bird flu. Um, America America's egg farmers have invested uh significant dollars in recent years to increase biocurity measures. And when I talk biocurity, we're talking about, you know, um, truck wash stations, limiting foot traffic as, you know, limiting, uh, people on the farms, um, kind of shower in, shower out when they go into the barns. Th those are the things that I'm talking about with biocurity. And there's there's been a significant investment over the recent years. But despite that focus on biocurity, it isn't foolproof. And unfortunately, the virus is still finding its way on the farms. And so, one of the things that the the government did was was put in place um funding to help support um additional assessments and audits on farms to really look at not only farms themselves, but the surrounding areas and identify risks and put uh plans in place to mitigate those risks. So, um, over 900 onfarmm audits on on poultry farms, uh, have been done to date. And, and again, this is this is just going to only further kind of bolster the security, um, that these farms have. And ultimately, you know, again, the the the number one defense against this virus is keeping it off the farms. And so, I I think this work is is going to significantly help. Okay. The next strategy I want to talk about is is vaccines. Uh this has been something that um the industry has um is very interested in. We think that while it's not a uh an end all be all to uh solving the the issues with bird flu, we think it's an important um component of of the various solutions. And so a working group uh was convened um American Egg Board, United Egg Producers along with experts such as epidemiologists uh to really put together a recommended vaccine protocol uh which was done um a couple months ago and put in the hands of the USDA uh for review. Um, again, we believe it's an important part of the long-term solution to ensure that we can mitigate wild fluctuations in in supply and and have a more stable supply chain. And so, uh, we're looking forward to a response from the USDA as to how to move forward. We do not I don't have a timeline at this point. Um, but again, we're very supportive of of of vaccinating um, egg laying hens to um, further protect the industry. And then um the last part of this plan I just want to touch on uh which again is is is just as important is is research and and more specifically it's understanding better understanding both the virus and potential um remedies for the virus. Uh so as part of the uh the five-prong strategy, the USDA uh put forward a hundred million dollars to to do research on um a influenza uh the how the how the virus is is is spreading, how it is mutating and what are potential vaccinations or therapeutics that could you know support uh long term. Um as part of this the American egg board has submitted a grant proposal uh which leverages AI in this case AI is artificial intelligence not avian influenza so leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to really assess the risks um across farms and what that means is the proposal is to look at both farms that have been impacted by bird flu as well as those that haven't and and and try and understand what are the variables uh common variables across those different data sets and and what learnings can be derived from that to help the entire industry uh put strategies in place in the future. So uh we're incredibly excited about this opportunity um and uh again we're looking to you know looking forward to finding out the results of which uh which research grants the USDA is going to fund and and which ones they won't be able to uh in the very near future. Uh so that's that's a bit of a recap on kind of what's being done. Um I have one last slide before I turn over to Dana and it really goes back to a point I made early on which is you know um about consumer demand and and while it's uh it has slowed in in recent periods um I think I'd start by saying while it's slowed in recent periods consumer demand is is still strong. uh it's coming off historic highs. In 2024, sales volume in retail grew over 4%. That's volume, not revenue. So sales volume grew over 4% coming into this year. We had 23 consecutive periods of growth. So very robust uh market from a consumer standpoint. And as you would expect, those numbers dropped dramatically in the first quarter of this year. um I think it was February or March we were volume was down over 9% so a significant drop off but that that decline has slowed so in the most recent uh 4-week period volume was only down 1.4% and and that's an improvement from the the the previous period where it was down 2.4 for. So, it's steadily gotten better. And again, I I would argue that um demand itself has not necessarily weakened. What you saw in the first quarter and early second quarter was really um uh in large part a function of supply. Consumers maybe weren't able to find the eggs that they wanted and that certainly played a role in some of those numbers. Um, at the end of the day, um, the consumer and consumer demand has been very resilient for eggs. And, um, there's no reason for us to believe that as the industry recovers going into the back half of this year and next year that that these numbers aren't only going to improve. uh in large part because the demand is being underpinned by very strong macro consumer trends such as protein and and really an increased appetite for protein. Right? So consumers at this point can't get enough protein in their diets. They're continually seeking more. We're seeing more and more new products come out that are promoting um increased protein and and eggs play a very significant role in that particularly particularly at at breakfast time. So while consumer demand has softened, we do expect it to come back and um you know and this is in large part you know the focus of what our efforts are and some of the things that that that Dana is going to share with you around tools that we have to help um you know to help give consumers the the information they need to um to drive egg demand. So with that I am going to turn it over to Dana to uh to take us home here. Awesome. Thanks, Nate. Hello, everyone. Uh, thanks for joining us today. You know, at the American Egg Board, our goal is to really be a value added resource by providing education, insights, and turnkey toolkits to help you grow your egg category. We also want to be there to support you during challenging times just as we had this year with bird flu. That's why we created the high path support hub for you. Um, it contains uh answers to frequently asked questions, uh, consumer education materials so you can educate your consumers on what's happening. Um, uh, social media posts as well as download downloadable signage. The QR code is here on the screen. Um, if you want to scan it now to access the hub, you know, go right ahead. Otherwise, we will make this presentation available after the webinar so you can scan it later. So what we're really excited about and we always knew that eggs are healthy but it finally has met the FDA's definition for healthy. So we we've done is put together a toolkit kind of celebrate this new news and I will be going through several of the elements contained in the toolkit and I will also provide a QR code so you can download the toolkit and leverage it with your stores. Um, so the first is an example of a downloadable instore sign. Um, it talks a little bit about um, the fact that eggs need meet FDA's new healthy definition. There's a QR code there for consumer to scan if they want to learn a little bit more about FDA's new healthy rule as well as the benefits of eating eggs. Next, um, here's a couple other uh, items contained in the toolkit. uh communication starters. So this is messaging whether you want to activate it through intercom announcements, radio spots or circulars. And then we also provided um directions if you wanted um to hold a virtual cooking demo um for your customers. Next slide. Um and here is other resources that are available to you. Uh it's a handout that talks about the 12 health benefits of eggs that you should know. Then the dozen reasons why eggs are healthy. And then we also provide we're calling it a backgrounder. It's just more information on FDA's new healthy definition. Next slide. And then we also done some of the heavy lifting for you. We've created social media post, website copy, and digital ads for you to use on your channel. So the work has been done. So, you can lift it and use it as is. Um, it's ready to go for you. Next slide. And then, as I mentioned, um, here's the QR code. Please scan it to download the toolkit. Again, if you don't have your phone handy right now, we will be providing this presentation and you can scan it at a later date. And then next slide. And then f finally, we know that consumers are confused about different henousing types. A lot of them then think that they know what the differences are, but after speaking to consumers or listening in on focus groups, um there's a lot of u misconceptions out there. So, what we've done is put together a landing page on our incredible egg website. The I've included the link here and it really does talk about the differences of the different henousing types. includes illustrations and um it you know we can also provide um or work with you on signage in store to educate consumers at point of purchase. Um we're calling it you have options. We believe there's an egg for everyone. Um and we just want to clear up the confusion. So, this this is a worthwhile resource and again um feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to partner on developing some instore signage to further educate consumers on this topic. And then so that is all we had today. Um as Jessica mentioned, if you have questions, please feel free to put them in the comments. Nate and I will circle back with Jessica and make sure that we follow up with you. Um the egg industry is resilient. The American Egg Board is here as a resource for you. Um, my contact information is on screen. I'd be would love to hear from you and how we can help support you further. Um, thank you so much for your time today. And I'm going to just turn it back to Jessica. Hello again, everyone. Thank you so much. Um, really a huge thank you to Dana and Nate for sharing those insights and resources with us. We hope everyone on the webinar uh found this information valuable. And if you, as Dana said, I'm echoing this again, but if you have any questions for Dana or Nate, please enter those in the chat and we will send out a Q&A via email to get all of those answered. Um, and of course you have Dana's contact information if you want to reach out to her directly. Uh, thank you again and we will be in touch shortly.