Walmart Includes In-Ovo Sexing in New Egg Supplier Guidelines

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, known for its budget friendliness and accessible offerings, recently released new animal welfare policies and guidelines where the company made the innovative decision to include in-ovo sexing as a focus area for its US egg suppliers. This forward-thinking announcement from Walmart comes just two short months after the very first hatch of in-ovo sexed chicks on US soil, and it sends a compelling message about the future prospects of in-ovo sexing’s rollout.

As the egg industry grapples with the emergency of HPAI, and egg industry stakeholders monitor the rollout of NestFresh’s first ever table eggs produced with in-ovo sexing over the next few months, some have recently wondered about the pace of in-ovo sexing’s implementation.

In light of this announcement, one thing is clear: the largest retailers are taking notice, and that signals greater momentum than was previously anticipated. We previously predicted that in-ovo sexing would proliferate throughout the speciality category before jumping to the commodity sector, but Walmart’s announcement suggests in-ovo sexing might start to gain a footing in various segments of the market simultaneously.

In-ovo sexing’s introduction to the US has already demonstrated that progress can seem slow, until sudden acceleration catches the industry off guard. In early 2024, the broad consensus was that in-ovo sexing was years away from the US market. As it turned out, there would be three machines on US soil by the end of the year. Now, Walmart’s announcement illuminates the future for in-ovo sexing in the US, and it is a future where in-ovo sexing completely transforms the US egg supply chain.