Three years into the outbreak and amidst outrageous increases in egg prices, the United States Department of Agriculture continues to make dangerous payouts to big companies and delay corrective action.
Rate of destruction among egg-laying hens appears to be increasing
This press release was originally sent out on March 7th, 2025.
Farm Forward released a new report today detailing how the federal government’s multi-billion dollar payments to meat, egg, and dairy companies encourage the spread of bird flu, despite the growing risk of the virus mutating into a deadly human pandemic. Over $2 billion in taxpayer-funded payments have gone mainly to large, industrial meat and egg companies like Jennie-O, Cal-Maine, and Tyson, to mass kill birds that have been exposed to bird flu.
Titled “Are We Subsidizing the Next Pandemic?,” Farm Forward’s report finds:
Nearly a year ago, it was reported that the USDA had paid out nearly $1 billion in what the industry calls “indemnity payments,” which are meant to encourage meat and egg companies to report cases of bird flu by compensating them for the value of the birds they kill off. Companies like Cal-Maine (the largest egg producer in the U.S.) are getting these bailouts even though they have seen record profits, attributed in part to skyrocketing prices for eggs.
In February, the Trump administration announced plans to spend another $900 million dollars in Big Ag bailouts. This brings the total taxpayer funded bailouts for the meat and egg industry to well over $2 billion since the beginning of the outbreak in February 2022. Approximately $400 million of the new funding would go to egg and meat companies to both indemnify losses and buy new flocks of birds to replace those killed (a “double payment” since these farmers were already paid by taxpayers for the value of the birds killed). Another $500 million would pay companies to increase so-called biosecurity measures—measures that have so far proven ineffective at containing the virus and which taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for.
As noted in the report, the only measure that has proven effective in other countries is vaccine mandates, which the USDA has refused to issue because of industry pressure. Farm Forward’s report documents how the USDA has admitted its own failings in oversight of biosecurity measures, with no meaningful audit system in place to ensure compliance. Despite this and the worsening of the pandemic, USDA response to the outbreak is likely to get weaker due to recent mass layoffs of regulators at the USDA and HHS, including dozens of federal employees who have provided critical testing and tracking information.
Additional Farm Forward research reveals the extent to which the bird flu outbreak has decimated the U.S. population of egg-laying hens, and the apparent acceleration in the rate of that destruction. According to a new analysis by Farm Forward consultant Dr. Gail Hansen, an expert veterinary epidemiologist, the current bird flu outbreak led to the death or intentional killing of at least 13 percent of the entire US egg-laying hen population in 2024. The rate of cullings appears to be increasing: approximately 39 percent of laying hens killed since the beginning of the outbreak have occurred in just the last few months, likely due to the emergence of a new strain of bird flu, D1.1. Following the spread of the D1.1 genotype and the resulting sharp spike in the killing of laying hens, egg prices increased rapidly through the fall of 2024, reaching an all-time high of an average $4.95 per dozen in January 2025. The D1.1 strain—now the predominant genotype in North American flyways—is also more dangerous to humans, having caused a Canadian teen infected after no known animal contact to become critically ill, the hospitalization of a patient in Wyoming, and the death of a Louisiana man—the first human death in the US from this bird flu outbreak.
“When you look at this data, it is 100% clear that the government’s response is not working, and is almost certainly part of why the pandemic is getting worse every day.” Andrew deCoriolis, Executive Director of Farm Forward said. “It’s insane for us to give away $900 million in new taxpayer handouts to meat and egg companies, on top of the $1.4 billion they’ve gotten already, without demanding changes to the very practices that put us at risk.”