Bird flu outbreaks have forced tens of millions of chickens to be culled across nine states over the past year as more hotspots continue to emerge.
So far, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed a staggering 41 outbreaks this year that struck down entire egg-laying flocks in Arizona, California, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Ohio, where a majority of this year’s spread was isolated, tacked on another flareup this week — its first since early March, according to the April Egg Markets Overview from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.
The seemingly endless culling sparked a national egg shortage that inflated prices over the first few months of 2025, with prices across some states peaking around a whopping $8 in February.
While costs have since fallen, the average wholesale price of eggs still sits at $3.13, according to the USDA.
In total, 30.6 million chickens have been affected since January, according to the USDA. Of these, 19.6 million were in caged systems while the other 11 million roamed free.
As impacted states begin to feel the pressure, leaders began to call on the Trump administration to ramp up its response — including the Republican governor of Ohio.
“One of the things that is clear is that the federal government is really going to have to accelerate the research that is being done in regard to bird flu,” Gov. Mike DeWine said last month.
Last month, the USDA proposed a $1 billion master plan to tackle bird flu that should be set into motion this summer. In it, $400 million is set aside to support impacted farmers in cleaning and repopulating their farms, which can take up to six months.
At least, that was the plan before the Department of Health and Human Services layoffs, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resulted in the dismissal of people tasked with responding to bird flu.
The notoriously anti-vaccine Kennedy scion asserted that farmers should avoid immunizing their flocks to avoid turning them “into mutation factories.”
Since April 2024, 70 human cases of bird flu have been reported, according to an update from the CDC in March. No cases so far have been caused by human-to-human transmission.
“The current risk of bird flu for the general public is low. However, people with close and prolonged, unprotected contact with infected birds and other animals are at greater risk of infection,” the Ohio Department of Health said.
Since the beginning of 2022, around 168 billion poultry birds have been affected by avian influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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