The U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting $100 million toward researching a vaccine that could help stop the massive cullings due to avian influenza.
With highly pathogenic avian influenza driving up egg prices in the United States to unprecedented heights, government officials are beginning to consider the use of vaccines to combat the illness.
The decision is complex because vaccination would instantly cut off more than half of the United States’ poultry exports due to trade provisions that forbid vaccination.
Even before any vaccine is approved, government officials are talking to international partners to soften the blow on the U.S. chicken export business in the eventuality that the United States deploys a vaccine.
Bird flu and the culling measures taken to attempt to stop its spread have wiped out 166 million birds in the United States since the current outbreak began in February 2022. This has driven up egg prices and triggered isolated shortages around the nation.
Over the past decade, the United States has faced two large outbreaks of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu. The first outbreak, which occurred over the winter of 2014–15, hit the egg and turkey industries hard but was halted through the culling of sick birds, movement controls, and strict biosecurity measures.
The current bird flu outbreak has continued almost nonstop since February 2022 and the old strategy has so far failed to break the tide of the infection. As a result, both producers and regulators are considering a vaccine as a solution, even though it could cause extensive damage to the lucrative chicken export business.
Vaccination on the Table
The crisis has drawn the attention of the White House. During an address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, President Donald Trump said the price of eggs was “out of control” and called on his Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, to “do a good job” of handling the issue.
Rollins announced the first step in carrying out that objective on Feb. 26. Along with committing as much as $1 billion to fight bird flu and drive down egg prices, Rollins announced the USDA will be taking the extraordinary step of exploring “vaccines, therapeutics, and other innovative solutions to minimize depopulation of egg-laying chickens.”
