Amid the continued spread of avian flu and high egg prices, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $1 billion plan to fight avian flu and lower egg prices. 

The new strategy comes two days after USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins visited East Texas to speak with nearly two dozen representatives of the agriculture industry. 

Egg prices soared to nearly $5.00 last month, a 53% jump from a year ago. The USDA says egg prices could go up another 41% this year.    

As part of the plan, the USDA will spend $500 million on biosecurity measures. 

The government will provide commercial egg farms with best practices and consulting services to prevent the spread of avian flu at no charge and pay up to 75% of the costs to address vulnerabilities. 

About $400 million will be added to financial relief programs for impacted farmers that began during the Biden administration. 

The USDA will provide about $100 million for the research and development of vaccines and therapeutics to help reduce the need to kill chickens when there's an outbreak. 

If necessary, the government will consider temporarily importing eggs as long as they meet U.S. safety standards. The agency will also eliminate regulations that they say raise egg prices.

In an interview with CBS News Texas in Mount Pleasant Monday, Rollins said regulations have an impact. 

"When you're a state like California that passes Proposition 12, which, by the way, requires the chickens have a lot of space, the price of eggs in California, the average price is over $9.50," said Rollins. "The average price for the rest of the country is closer to $5.00." 

When asked what policies they are considering to lower food costs Rollins said, "It is across the board, deregulation, lifting a lot of the rules and regulations put in place in the last administration. The bigger government gets, the more regulators are on your back, the more rules you have to follow, the more our farmers have to fill out more paperwork, more bureaucratic processes, that causes everything to increase in cost." 

One egg producer told Rollins Monday that it takes one chicken for every person in the U.S. to have ample supply and that right now, there's a deficit of 50 million birds because they've had to kill so many of them across the country for years.

Rollins said prices won't go down right away. 

"This is more of a long-term solution, but what I can say is that those prices should start coming down maybe this spring, this summer as we work to implement some of those bigger-picture solutions," said Rollins.

Watch Jack's full interview with Rollins below:

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