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.
Federal research budgets were shrinking. Across the country, poultry education and research programs began 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.
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.
The visionaries' actions ensured the industry's future access to science-based information. By creating the Egg Industry Center at Iowa State University, the group provided 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. The Egg Industry Center is grateful to these visionaries and we are proud to help advance the U.S. Egg Industry through research and research information dissemination.
The Egg Industry Center is funded through a variety of sources. The combination of these funding streams adds to the sustainability of the center.
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 producers 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. Donations are put in an endowment fund managed by the Iowa State University Foundation. These endowment funds are used by the Egg Industry Center to award research grants to researchers throughout the country. 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. 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.
If you are interested in becoming a sponsor or donor, we would love to hear from you! Thank you for your consideration.
