A north Alabama farm is struggling to keep up with its rising egg demand as the industry fights the ongoing Avian Flu surge, according to Keith Southard, owner of Southard Farms in Madison.

Southard told CBS Saturday Mornings’ Kati Weis his chickens “can’t lay enough eggs every day to fill the demand.”

“It’s unreal,” he said.

Southard told Weis he gathers 750 eggs a day by hand and added that this number will soon increase as a result of the farm signing another restaurant contract, increasing their production to 11,000 eggs per week.

Last year, Southard’s flock was hit with a type of mycoplasma that had symptoms very similar to those of Avian Flu, Southard told CBS. So, he said, the farm was required to “cull the flock and start over.”

For reasons not specified by Southard, his farm did not qualify for a USDA reimbursement to replace the flock.

CBS found that the USDA has paid $1.1 billion to large commercial poultry companies forced to kill their flocks due to Avian Flu since 2020.

When Weis asked Marc Burleson of Mississippi’s Wayne-Sanderson Farms if he thought that was a fair expense to taxpayers, he responded that it was “a great question.”

“The alternative is to let it spread, and we can’t do that,” he said.

In an attempt to alleviate the egg shortage, the National Chicken Council recently sent a request to the FDA to allow surplus broiler eggs usually used for hatching to be processed and sold.

“The ongoing highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak, spiking egg prices and shortages, and across-the-board inflation continue to significantly and negatively impact the U.S. consumer and their wallets,” the request reads.

“Exercising immediate enforcement discretion to allow hundreds of millions of surplus broiler eggs to be diverted for processing into egg products, as was the case prior to a 2009 policy change, would relieve some pressure on the egg supply without compromising consumer safety.”

The FDA stopped allowing broiler eggs to be sold in 2009 due to concerns about impurity, safety, and fraudulent labeling, according to its website.

But Burleson told Weis that the eggs are safe for consumption after they are pasteurized at the facility.