Why the Egg Industry Is Pushing for a Bird Flu Vaccine

Editor’s Note: We believe the “bird flu” is a manufactured crisis intended to allow the powers-that-be a path to introduce new pathogens into the food supply, reduce and control protein production, or both. The article below offers conclusions that we don’t necessarily believe, but it’s important for everyone to be aware of the narrative that’s being spread. I encourage everyone to read through the article to gain an understanding of the agenda being laid out before us.

(The Epoch Times)—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.”

Using a vaccine is a tricky subject in the poultry world because of the significant potential international trade impacts.

Greg Tyler, the president and CEO of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, told The Epoch Times that if the United States started vaccinating today, as much as $3 billion worth of the country’s $5.8 billion poultry export market could be instantly closed off.

A senior USDA official who spoke with The Epoch Times confirmed that the agency considers vaccination an option to fight bird flu but it hasn’t made any final decisions and won’t rush to make any.

Rollins, the official said, understands the complexity of the issue and will consult with all parties in state governments, the agriculture industry, and the international trade community before making any decision.

The official said Rollins understands that vaccination is not the only solution to the country’s bird flu problem and may well not be the best possible solution. Logistically, the official said, vaccinating birds would be difficult as the technology does not yet exist for a dose to be administered without physically injecting birds.

The USDA has not yet approved any bird flu vaccine for use in the United States.

Tyler said he’s aware of a governmental effort to present a vaccination plan to the U.S.’s major trading partners to solicit each country’s feedback and, therefore, minimize trade impacts. Previously, he said, government officials were rushing to vaccination as a “quick fix” to drop egg prices. Still, he said the education offered by the poultry industry and elected officials from states with a significant poultry industry led to a more measured approach surrounding vaccination.

Ultimately, Tyler said the U.S. poultry industry wants to move ahead with vaccination if it helps the domestic egg industry, but a solution that doesn’t interfere with the massive U.S. export business needs to be found.

Risks and Rewards

The scale of the outbreak and the prevalence of potential disease vectors demonstrate that vaccination may well be in the future for the U.S. egg industry.

In a previous interview, Carol Cardona, a professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota, said bird flu is on the precipice of becoming endemic among wild bird populations in North America. Wild birds are considered the primary transmitter of the disease. However, Cardona said that recent research shows bird flu is now present in mammalian populations, including cats and dogs.

As the disease continues to spread to other species and mutate, Cardona predicted that vaccination may be “the next step” in combating the disease as new infections and culls are occurring at a much faster rate than the industry can replace productive birds.

The egg industry, in particular, is pushing for a vaccine rollout.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on Feb. 26, Tony Wesner, CEO of Indiana-based egg producer Rose Acre Farms, spoke at length about the egg industry’s trials during the past three years and its priorities going forward.

Wesner told the committee that the previous 2014-2015 outbreak was defeated by stamping out or culling infected flocks and strict isolation measures because the virus was primarily spread from one farm to another in so-called lateral transmission. This time around, wild birds and other vectors are circumventing biosecurity measures.

Wesner, speaking on behalf of a national egg farmers alliance called the United Egg Producers, recommended the United States adopt an “aggressive, forward-looking strategy for vaccination.”

Specifically, the egg industry would like to see the USDA stockpile bird flu vaccines, research delivery methods other than injection, establish a plan that would minimize risk to the U.S. export market, and begin field trials as soon as possible on an isolated layer flock located in Hawaii.

In a statement, the United Egg Producers said it believes using a vaccine as part of a broad disease control strategy would significantly reduce the risk of viral circulation among commercial poultry flocks, reduce viral shedding that could infect other flocks and animals, and lower the overall economic shocks caused by the spread of bird flu.

The United States’s overall egg-laying flock, however, is dwarfed by its counterparts who were raised to be slaughtered for meat. According to data published by the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association about 9.4 billion so-called broiler chickens were slaughtered for meat in 2023. By comparison, in 2022, the United States had 308 million commercial laying hens in the field, according to the United Egg Producers.

Because the United States produces so much chicken meat—about 61 billion pounds in 2023—a significant amount is exported. American producers exported more than 7 billion pounds of chicken in 2023, according to the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association.

Tyler said many of the most important export destinations for that meat maintain provisions that would ban poultry imports from the United States if vaccination begins. These triggers are based on fears that the meat or live poultry imported as breeding stock would bring the disease into the receiving country.

In a statement released on Feb. 21, the National Chicken Council (NCC), an industry group representing chicken meat processors and packers, said the broiler industry does and will continue to oppose any vaccination plan that does not include “robust trade protections.”

“The industry least affected by bird flu stands to lose the most with a vaccination strategy without trade protections,” David Elrod, the NCC’s director of government affairs, said in the statement.

One notable test balloon has already been floated. In the recent past, France began vaccinating poultry against bird flu and was subsequently banned from most international trade, Tyler said. However, exports are starting to open up again for the European nation if it can prove to its trading partners that the product did not originate in a region where vaccination is occurring.

Tyler said that there is a growing realization in the global poultry industry that bird flu is a worldwide problem. With France out of the gate on vaccination, everyone is now looking for a bigger market to test targeted vaccination and so-called trade compartmentalization.

“They’re looking for someone to step out and say, ‘Okay, this is how it could be done,’” Tyler told The Epoch Times. “I think we may see more countries come forth with the interest of vaccinating once the U.S. starts a vaccination program.”

Human Health Questions

A senior USDA official told The Epoch Times that one key reason for maintaining the practice of culling—even in the face of real inflationary impacts—is the desire to prevent the virus from mutating and becoming a serious human health problem. If that were to happen, egg prices would be a minor problem by comparison.

Cardona said the global experience with bird flu over the past three decades, its high propensity to mutate, and current transmission among mammals all point toward the disease regularly infecting humans in the future. When that happens, public health authorities will need to ask themselves serious questions about mass vaccination to protect human health.

Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine pioneer known for his skepticism of the U.S. public health establishment’s approach to COVID-19, said the bird flu virus is known for “drifts and shifts” in its genetics. Still, he isn’t yet concerned about the human health risk presented by bird flu.

Rather, he told The Epoch Times, he is worried that a “leaky” mRNA vaccine administered to birds en masse will speed up the creation of a vaccine-resistant variant of bird flu. Just like U.S. trading partners, he is also concerned that vaccination can mask the presence of the virus.

“Farm workers will be exposed to infected flocks that aren’t showing disease as prominently,” Malone said. “If the virus does jump into humans, then it’s already evolved to escape immune surveillance to some extent. Those are not good things.”