U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said Wednesday that there are “no anticipated changes” to the current federal policy requiring poultry to be culled in response to bird flu outbreaks, which have driven up egg prices to record highs in recent months.
The decision marks a rebuke of an idea floated by Trump administration officials in recent weeks to change the policy. More than 35 million birds have been killed in response to bird flu outbreaks in commercial flocks so far this year, according to the USDA’s figures.
“The Biden plan was to just kill chickens, and they spent billions of dollars just randomly killing chickens within a perimeter where they found a sick chicken,” Kevin Hasset, director of the White House’s economic council, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Feb. 16.
The U.S. and most other countries have a “stamping-out policy” for bird flu, in order to comply with standards that underpin international poultry exports from the World Organization for Animal Health, or WOAH.
“No anticipated changes to our current stamping-out policy at this time. And we will continue to follow WOAH guidelines,” Rosemary Sifford, chief veterinary officer for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said Wednesday on a call with stakeholders.
Biden administration officials had defended the culling approach as the best way to contain outbreaks and cut down on unnecessary suffering of poultry birds who are likely to otherwise die prolonged deaths from the disease anyway.
“The avian flu is an extremely fast spreading virus. And within a couple of days, it spreads so quickly that most of the chickens have died anyway,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday in a Fox News interview.
But Rollins also reiterated openness to changing the policy, saying that they hoped to fund research into “some pilot programs around the country” that might help avoid culling infected birds.
“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” she added.
Changes to how authorities respond to bird flu outbreaks could also have major implications for America’s poultry industry, which exported more than $5 billion of poultry products last year.
Rising egg prices
Sifford’s remarks come as the Trump administration is rolling out a new plan to combat the surge in egg prices driven by this past winter’s uptick in bird flu outbreaks.
Some of the new plan amounts to continuations of programs already being developed at the department, former USDA officials under the Biden administration said, or federal funding that officials had already secured towards combating the virus.
One near-term change officials highlighted is that the USDA says it will soon pay “up to 75% of the cost of addressing some of the highest risk biosecurity challenges that the producer faces,” when issues are identified through the free audits that are offered to farmers.
Rollins also said the administration is looking to import eggs in the short term, telling reporters at the White House that the talks could amount to up to 100 million more eggs imported over the next two months.
In a call with reporters, officials mentioned Turkey as an example of a country that could export millions more eggs to the U.S. this year.
The officials also said that they wanted “to be realistic” about the temporary imports, citing the need for food safety precautions on imported eggs. Private purchases of the imported eggs will also not be subsidized by the administration.
Considering a plan to vaccinate poultry for bird flu
One longer-term change could be the possibility of deploying a vaccine for poultry, which the Trump administration says it is now seriously considering.
While previous administrations have poured money into research and development of new poultry vaccinations for bird flu, the idea has been plagued by concerns that vaccinating chickens would lead to undetected bird flu infections spreading in flocks that aren’t displaying symptoms.
Current outbreaks in the U.S. have already led to some spread of the virus from poultry to raw pet food, leading to the deaths of cats in several states.
Any move to start vaccinating poultry could trigger import bans under agreements governing poultry exports, over concerns that food could be contaminated with the virus. Drawing up a plan to surveil and test poultry for missed infections would be needed to assuage those fears.
One former USDA official under the Biden administration said it took more than a year of daily meetings to negotiate safely resuming imports of some poultry from France after that country’s authorities decided to begin vaccinating ducks for bird flu.
“We expect to start the working group within the next two weeks and we will move very swiftly to put together a full plan, so that we can put that in front of trading partners as quickly as possible,” said Sifford on the stakeholder call.
USDA officials cautioned that they had not yet actually decided to begin vaccinations of poultry, citing the potential impact on exports.
Instead, the department plans to continue supporting research and development into vaccines. Studies are aimed at overcoming the two longstanding hurdles towards using the shots: attempting to achieve “sterilizing immunity” to stop spread of the virus and making it easier to administer to the hundreds of birds in commercial flocks.
“We’re going to make sure that we work to limit any impact on export trade markets, if there ever was vaccination rolled out,” the department’s chief of staff Kailee Buller told reporters.
