Egg prices have been skyrocketing, leaving consumers frustrated, and on Wednesday, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) attributed the surge to the bird flu outbreak. The USDA also announced a new plan aimed at addressing the crisis.
The updated strategy seems to refocus the department’s efforts on bringing egg prices down. During a press briefing at the White House, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins acknowledged that it may take a few months for prices to decrease.
“We may see a slight increase until Easter,” Rollins told CNN, noting that this is typical due to the high demand for eggs around the holiday.
“It will take a little time to work through, probably the next month or two, but we’re hopeful by summer,” Rollins said.
In a new op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, along with a press release later in the day, Rollins detailed a five-pronged strategy aimed at tackling the bird flu crisis. The plan focuses on bolstering biosecurity on egg-laying farms and assisting farmers who have lost flocks to recover more quickly. She also mentioned that the USDA may temporarily permit egg imports to help increase supply.
Rollins explained that the USDA is exploring the use of vaccines and therapeutics for chickens to reduce the need for bird culling, although no such treatments have been authorized yet.
“To every family struggling to buy eggs: We hear you, we’re fighting for you, and help is on the way,” Rollins wrote.
The USDA’s new initiative will invest $1 billion, partially funded by cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency. According to Rollins’ op-ed, the breakdown of the plan includes:
- $500 million for enhancing wildlife biosecurity measures to prevent the virus from reaching farms. This includes expanding a pilot program that sends USDA inspectors to assess biosecurity on farms.
- $400 million to reimburse farmers whose flocks have been affected. While farmers already receive compensation for lost chickens, the USDA added a requirement for poultry producers to pass a biosecurity audit to qualify for this aid.
- $100 million in research and development for new vaccines and therapeutics for poultry, although no vaccines have been authorized yet.
- Easing regulations for egg producers and facilitating the ability for families to raise backyard chickens.
- Considering temporary egg imports to help lower prices.
Some, however, felt the plan was insufficiently aggressive.
For example, it does not expand milk surveillance to cover all states, even though contaminated milk can contain high levels of the virus before pasteurization. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the 70 human H5N1 infections in the US this year, 41 were linked to dairy farming, and 24 were connected to poultry culling.
Doug Corwin, a Long Island duck farmer who had to cull his flock of 99,000 ducks after the virus was detected, expressed disappointment that the plan didn’t emphasize poultry vaccines more strongly.
“I find this proposal very naïve,” Corwin told CNN in a text message on Wednesday.
While he acknowledged that biosecurity and surveillance measures are helpful, Corwin believes vaccines are the only solution to stabilize the situation.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but essentially they are doubling down on biosecurity,” he said.
The USDA recently granted a conditional license for a bird flu vaccine developed by the company Zoetis. There are also other licensed bird flu vaccines in the U.S., including one from the German company Boehringer-Ingelheim, which has been used in countries like France and Mexico.
“We need tools like vaccines to protect poultry from H5N1 because the virus is lethal to them, and the endless, expensive cycle of culling doesn’t seem to be stopping the virus from infecting flocks,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, who directs the Pandemic Center at Brown University. “While the vaccine may not completely prevent flocks from infection, making the virus less lethal to birds could help ease some of the financial burdens caused by H5N1.”
Rollins added that the use of vaccines and therapeutics could reduce the need for culling entire flocks of birds.
Culling, which involves killing all the birds in a flock where some have been infected, has been an effective method to control bird flu outbreaks in the past. During the last major bird flu wave in the U.S. in 2014, aggressive culling helped halt the spread of the virus within a year. However, in the current epidemic, culling alone has not been enough to contain the contagion. Since February 2022, over 166 million birds have died, according to the USDA.
Taxpayers have felt the impact in various ways, from higher egg prices at the grocery store to covering the costs of dead birds. Over the past three years, the U.S. government has paid poultry producers more than $1.25 billion to compensate them for the loss of their flocks.
Last year, the USDA acknowledged that the culling strategy wasn’t as effective as hoped, with about 20% of indemnity payments going to farms that had been infected multiple times. In response, the USDA introduced a new requirement in December, mandating that farms pass a biosecurity audit before qualifying for compensation.
On Wednesday, Rollins commented that poultry farmers had been overregulated and promised to ease rules that have made it difficult for them to restart their operations after losing flocks, though she didn’t specify what changes would be made.
Poultry producers, however, have been hesitant to adopt bird flu vaccines. The vaccines are expensive and labor-intensive to administer to millions of birds. Additionally, the U.S. is a major poultry exporter, and many countries refuse to accept vaccinated birds.
“We will also work with our trading partners to minimize potential negative trade effects for U.S. producers and to assess public health concerns,” Rollins wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) now considers vaccination a necessary tool to control the spread of bird flu, which has evolved from being a seasonal threat to birds into a year-round danger affecting many mammal species, including dairy cattle.
WOAH recommends vaccinating flocks, but emphasizes that it should not be the only measure. While vaccines don’t prevent birds from becoming infected, they can reduce the severity of the disease, potentially saving entire flocks and lowering the risk of transmission to humans or other wildlife. However, vaccines do not completely eliminate the possibility of transmission.
Because of this, countries adopting vaccination strategies must ensure they are using high-quality vaccines that are regularly updated to match circulating viruses. Additionally, adequate surveillance is necessary to monitor vaccinated birds in case they become infected but don’t show symptoms. WOAH also advocates for rigorous testing to detect any silent spread of the disease. Furthermore, it encourages farmers and poultry producers to share data on how long vaccine protection lasts.
