H5N1, a extremely pathogenic pressure of avian influenza referred to as chook flu, continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s egg farms. For the reason that begin of 2025, greater than 30 million egg-laying hens — about 10 % of the nationwide flock — have fallen prey to the virus or been brutally killed by egg producers in an effort to sluggish its unfold. It’s led to egg shortages and a spike in egg costs, which reached $5.89 per dozen on common in February, up from beneath $2 in 2021, earlier than the present chook flu outbreak started.
Final week, in an effort to spice up egg provide, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered the state’s agriculture division to delay its cage-free egg legislation by an extra seven years. It was initially supposed to enter impact firstly of 2025, then bought pushed to the beginning of 2027, and can now be pushed to 2034. The legislation requires eggs produced and offered within the state to come back from hens raised in cage-free barns reasonably than within the tiny, cramped cages which can be predominant within the egg {industry}.
Final month, Nevada briefly suspended its cage-free egg legislation for comparable causes, and the state’s governor has stated he desires to repeal Nevada’s cage-free requirements altogether.
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In January, state lawmakers in Michigan and Colorado launched payments to do exactly that of their states. Colorado’s invoice is lifeless, whereas Michigan’s invoice continues to be in committee. President Donald Trump’s USDA secretary Brooke Rollins has additionally known as for rolling again California’s Proposition 12, a landmark animal welfare legislation that requires eggs to be cage-free, amongst different reforms.
These efforts are a part of a a lot bigger, longer-term pattern making an attempt to dismantle what little progress has been made on farm animal welfare within the US. For years, livestock industry-friendly members of Congress have pushed for the EATS Act, which might ban states from setting their very own requirements for livestock merchandise imported from different states, thereby nullifying a few of the most essential farm animal welfare legal guidelines within the nation.
It’s unlikely that efforts to repeal and droop cage-free egg legal guidelines will decrease egg costs, as a result of there’s already little slack within the nationwide egg provide. The entire nation is going through egg shortages, so there’s not precisely a surplus of eggs mendacity round to fill the hole in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and different states with cage-free legal guidelines. College of Arkansas agricultural economist Jada Thompson instructed the Related Press final month that Nevada’s suspension may “very barely” ease egg costs within the state, however may additionally elevate costs in different states by diverting a few of the nationwide egg provide to Nevada.
Colorado’s agriculture commissioner just lately stated the state’s cage-free legislation is just not a major issue within the shortages or value spikes. The top of the commerce group Colorado Egg Producers instructed native media that the repeal invoice “would really hurt our farmers right here within the State of Colorado, and it might jeopardize the investments they’ve already made” in cage-free egg farming.
It’s a difficulty that each egg farmers and animal welfare advocates agree on: “Repealing state bans on cages gained’t cease the unfold of chook flu,” stated Hannah Truxell, senior coverage counsel of the animal safety group the Humane League, in an announcement to Vox final month. “It could, nonetheless, reverse years of essential meals {industry} progress.”
That progress is the speedy transition the egg {industry} has undertaken for the reason that early 2000s, when nearly all egg-laying hens have been confined in tiny cages that restricted them from even flapping their wings, not to mention shifting round. As we speak, 40 % of the egg {industry}’s 304 million hens are cage-free, as a result of legal guidelines in 11 US states and commitments from main meals companies, together with McDonald’s and Nestlé, to make use of solely cage-free eggs. The shift has diminished struggling for round 100 million hens yearly.
To make certain, cage-free doesn’t imply the animals have good lives — they’re nonetheless raised in huge, overcrowded, unsanitary barns, and investigations into cage-free farms have revealed horrid circumstances. However they’re actually higher than standard cage farms.
Delaying or repealing the few legal guidelines that ban cages will do nothing to deal with the core meals system vulnerability driving egg shortages — dependence on manufacturing unit farms. As a result of these egg farms are so monumental, every housing a whole lot of hundreds and even thousands and thousands of animals, a virus infecting only a couple operations can ship a shock to the meals provide in a single day. Delaying or tearing up cage-free legal guidelines to compensate for that vulnerability will solely additional punish animals within the relentless pursuit of low cost meals — a pursuit that’s guilty for a lot of this mess, as poultry manufacturing unit farms have supercharged the chook flu virus.
As consultants more and more fear that chook flu may boil over to create the following international pandemic, now must be a time for sober reflection on the dangers manufacturing unit farming poses, reasonably than a time to double down on it.
Chicken flu is essentially an issue of the manufacturing unit farm {industry}’s personal making
Over the past century, the US pioneered the event of manufacturing unit farming, which has since unfold across the globe. It has made meat, milk, and eggs extra considerable and reasonably priced, however it has additionally include quite a few environmental, animal welfare, and public well being issues, together with accelerating the unfold and virulence of H5N1.
The overwhelming majority of America’s greater than 9 billion turkeys, chickens, and egg-laying hens are raised on manufacturing unit farms, the place the genetically comparable animals are overcrowded and stay amongst their very own waste, all of which may compromise their immune methods.
Manufacturing facility farms current a “big alternative” for a virus or microbe to successfully unfold, Claas Kirchhelle, a medical historian on the College School Dublin, instructed me.
Influenzas have lengthy circulated amongst migratory water birds, however these have traditionally been “low-pathogenic” strains, inflicting little to no injury to the wild birds who contract and unfold it. However the virus can mutate from a low-pathogenic pressure to a high-pathogenic one — which causes deadly infections in poultry birds and extra successfully spreads to people. These high-pathogenicity conversion occasions have occurred 42 instances between 1959 and at this time — and nearly all have been first detected on poultry manufacturing unit farms.
Consultants consider that H5N1, first detected in China in 1996, transformed from low to high-pathogenicity after coming into a industrial poultry farm. By the early 2000s, the virus had unfold throughout the globe. The present US outbreak, now occurring three years, has mutated to trigger extreme sickness and loss of life in a whole lot of chook species, mammals corresponding to seals and sea lions, and, within the US, dairy cows. Greater than 70 pet cats, a lot of them dwelling on dairy farms, have fallen in poor health from chook flu, and a few died. In December, a cheetah and a mountain lion on the Arizona zoo died from the chook flu.
Seventy People have contracted the virus since 2022. Most of them have been dairy or poultry farmworkers, and most circumstances have been delicate. However in January, a Louisiana resident died after publicity to yard chickens and wild birds. And this winter, a 13-year-old Canadian woman caught a extreme chook flu an infection and was hospitalized for weeks; it’s unknown how she bought it.
Final month, the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention reported that three dairy veterinarians examined optimistic for H5N1 regardless of displaying no signs, suggesting the virus could possibly be extra prevalent in people than we predict. Days later, a Wyoming resident with a flock of yard chickens was hospitalized after testing optimistic for avian influenza.
By means of all of it, the US poultry and dairy industries have had little incentive to vary their disease-promoting enterprise fashions.
Coverage incentives give them no purpose to: When chook flu strikes a US poultry farm, the US Division of Agriculture covers the price of the mass killing of the birds — which is usually completed by shutting off air flow and utilizing heaters in order that the birds slowly, painfully die of heatstroke — together with the prices of carcass disposal and the market worth of the birds. Since 2022, the USDA had doled out greater than $1 billion in taxpayer {dollars} to egg producers affected by the virus. Dairy producers with chook flu outbreaks are additionally paid for his or her losses.
These bailouts — together with the present makes an attempt to nullify or delay cage-free legal guidelines — ship a message to the {industry} that policymakers gained’t query the foundational dangers of the manufacturing unit farm system, and can as an alternative frequently accommodate for these dangers. Delaying or briefly suspending state cage-free egg legal guidelines could convey very slight, short-term reduction on egg costs, however with out pairing it with longer-term options, we’re sure to finish up right here once more, or worse. Influenza consultants are more and more involved that the evolution and unfold of the virus over the previous couple of years — aided by dairy farmers unwilling to take the chook flu risk critically and a deferential USDA — may assist to set off the following international pandemic.
In a current story for Nautilus, journalist Brandon Keim wrote that scientists he spoke with “used phrases like ‘pink lights flashing,’ ‘completely novel ballgame,’ ‘no hope of containing,’ and ‘beneath assault.’”
Reforming America’s livestock-dependent coverage regime
There are a selection of short- and long-term steps policymakers may take to decrease the specter of chook flu.
In December, the USDA stated that some producers could also be “inclined to ignore biosecurity as a result of they consider that [the USDA] will proceed to cowl the prices related to damages associated to an HPAI outbreak.” The company has proposed a rule to require that producers go a biosecurity audit earlier than they’re eligible for indemnity funds.
However Congress may go additional by requiring producers to cowl their very own prices for mass killing and disposing of animals within the wake of illness outbreaks — a coverage that Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) proposed over two years in the past within the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act.
“Our federal agricultural coverage is designed in such a method that the manufacturing unit farm mannequin will get all the advantages and not one of the blame,” Jake Davis, a Missouri-based agricultural coverage professional and small farmer who suggested on the invoice, instructed Vox in 2022. “We’ve got not requested the {industry} to embed the danger to our meals system that they create.”
As egg costs soar, there’s been elevated urge for food for such options within the US.
Requiring the vaccination of egg-laying hens would assist, however components of the poultry {industry} are involved it might disrupt commerce, whereas the USDA — on the tail finish of the Biden administration — expressed issues concerning the effectiveness of accessible vaccines. In February, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins stated the company is exploring the usage of vaccines on poultry farms however quickly walked it again. The company continues to be investing in vaccine analysis, nonetheless.
Long run, policymakers may put money into diversifying America’s protein sources — at present, two-thirds of our protein consumption comes from animal merchandise. Fewer animals and fewer manufacturing unit farms would give avian influenza and different viruses fewer alternatives to mutate and unfold, whereas additionally benefitting the atmosphere and the animals themselves.
Congress, the USDA and FDA, and state governments helped to construct — and nonetheless assist to develop — the manufacturing unit farm system. However policymakers may select to shift the meals system in a extra plant-based course. Ahead-thinking international locations like Denmark and the Netherlands are already doing so via applications to pay farmers to boost fewer animals or develop extra plant-based crops and to help startups producing plant-based meat, milk, and egg options.
As egg costs soar, there’s been elevated urge for food for such options within the US. Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Eat Simply — the maker of a plant-based liquid egg product known as Simply Egg, which is made with mung bean protein — instructed me over e mail in February that product gross sales had been rising 5 instances sooner over the earlier month than up to now yr. And one of many largest US retailers, Tetrick stated, elevated its orders of the product by 30 % earlier this yr.
Simply Egg is expensive, costing about triple that of liquid eggs from a caged hen, however it’s not as a result of mung beans are costly; it’s as a result of it’s made by a startup that hasn’t achieved economies of scale, nor benefited from taxpayer bailouts or a long time of presidency help like the standard egg {industry}. If industrial egg farming does contribute to sparking the worldwide pandemic, investing in plant-based options will look good in hindsight.
As Eat Simply put it in a full-page New York Occasions commercial in 2023: “Crops don’t get the flu.”
Replace, March 29, 6 am ET: This story was initially revealed on February 20 and has been up to date with information that Arizona will delay its cage-free egg legislation, and that USDA secretary Brooke Rollins has known as for repealing California’s animal welfare legislation Proposition 12.
