History

Center Background

When the Egg Industry Center was created in 2008, the U.S. Egg Industry was experiencing a situation that was negatively impacting the industry’s future.

Shrinking research and education

Federal research budgets were shrinking, which caused poultry education and research programs across the country to disappear. As egg industry researchers and extension specialists retired, they were not replaced. For researchers that remained, the competition for funding had become fierce and there were fewer places to seek funding that would allow them to continue their work. This reduction in extension staff and researchers meant less people to talk to students about careers in the egg industry. Without an idea of what would be available for them after college, student interest in the industry would begin to decline and researchers needed to solve industry’s questions would not be developed to provide solutions for the industry.

Egg Industry needed thwarted

As the number of content experts declined, visionaries across the egg industry realized the industry’s vulnerability needed to be thwarted. They knew the industry still needed technical experts to solve the challenges in the industry’s future. These challenges included topics like sustainability, environmental stewardship, appropriate animal care, housing design and efficiency, genetic improvement, advances in nutrition and feeding, and value-added processing and marketing.

Ensuring the egg industry future

The visionaries’ actions culminated in the creation of the Egg Industry Center to ensure the industry’s future access to science-based information. By creating the Egg Industry Center, a funding mechanism for research that is not based on federal government funding fluctuations and is not vulnerable to legal challenges of the country’s commodity check-off programs was born. A research vehicle to ensure the needs of the industry were being met along with nurturing the problem-solving power of future scientists was created. The Egg Industry Center is grateful to these visionaries and we are proud to help advance the U.S. Egg Industry through research and science-based information dissemination.

Center Funding

The Egg Industry Center is funded through a variety of sources. The combination of these funding streams adds to the sustainability of the center.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor or donor, we would love to hear from you! Thank you for your consideration.

Sponsorships

The Egg Industry Center executes several tasks that are supported through sponsorship. Two examples of this are the annual Egg Industry Issues Forum and the monthly EIC Market Reports.

Private Donations

The Egg Industry Center has a collection of funds gathered from egg farmers and allied industry who believe in the need to have finances set aside for continued egg industry research. Donors often make a pledge and arrange a payment schedule by which the pledge total is donated. Per donor’s wishes, donations can be put towards specific projects or invested an endowment fund managed by the Iowa State University Foundation. The endowment fund ensures the longevity of donor’s gifts are protected for the industry over the long haul while earnings allow for fulfillment of the center’s mission like awarding research grants each year to researchers throughout North America. For more information on the projects that result from these funds, please see our research page.

University Support

The Egg Industry Center is located at Iowa State University within the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. Iowa State continually shows support for the center by providing a location to operate and many overhead expenses. This includes support of salaries, travel expenses, computers, telecommunications, access to university resources and much more.