Trump administration prepares to ditch culling as a disease control measure against HPAI

Published on : 24 Feb 2025

Reported Stateside in trade journal Farm Policy News, President Donald Trump’s top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, told CBS network audiences that the country ‘will move away from depopulating entire infected flocks and rely instead on ‘biosecurity and medication’ to contain outbreaks’. Hassett is the director of the National Economic Council, and described his work with the US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to find ‘better ways’ to control the spread of HPAI, which has driven such extraordinary inflation in the cost of eggs faced by consumers.

Egg prices in stores are now over $8 per dozen, with purchases rationed to one or two cartons per shopper. Consider this: breeders producing valuable fertile hatching eggs would make a greater profit selling their eggs to the table market rather than a hatchery. One chick can produce 500 eggs, but today just one egg is more valuable than a chick. If the breeders took the short-term payday from the table market, there would be no more chicks!

Retail shelf prices are three times higher than a year ago, and eggs have become a political problem. Americans don’t like inflation in their groceries any more than they like inflation in their gasoline, and the new administration appears to be setting out plans to take another radical step; to vaccinate against HPAI.

The USDA has given a conditional approval to animal pharmaceutical giant Zoetis to use their bird flu vaccine in poultry production. The conditional license is issued for a finite period, and used for emergencies, limited market availability or special circumstances. The US previously built stockpiles of vaccine after outbreaks of HPAI in 2014/5. These were never used, but the intention is now to rebuild stores.

While some poultry trade representatives welcomed the use of vaccines to combat the virus, others raised concern of the impact on international trade. Exports of poultry products run to billions of dollars, and trade relies on disease-free status. A policy of vaccination acknowledges the presence of disease, and therefore ‘free from’ status is lost. DIVA, or Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals, is the challenge. Only with tremendous rigour and expense can the monitoring strategy be implemented to distinguish friend from foe, and even then, the international trade partners need to accept the principle.