One state’s determined new plan to repair its egg scarcity

H5N1, a extremely pathogenic pressure of avian influenza often known as hen flu, continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s egg farms. For the reason that begin of 2025, greater than 30 million egg-laying hens — about 10 % of the nationwide flock — have fallen prey to the virus or been brutally killed by egg producers in an effort to gradual its unfold. It’s led to egg shortages and a spike in egg costs, which reached $5.89 per dozen on common in February, up from underneath $2 in 2021, earlier than the present hen flu outbreak started.

Final week, in an effort to spice up egg provide, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered the state’s agriculture division to delay its cage-free egg legislation by a further seven years. It was initially supposed to enter impact initially of 2025, then bought pushed to the beginning of 2027, and can now be pushed to 2034. The legislation requires eggs produced and bought within the state to come back from hens raised in cage-free barns slightly than within the tiny, cramped cages which can be predominant within the egg {industry}.

Final month, Nevada quickly suspended its cage-free egg legislation for related causes, and the state’s governor has mentioned he wants to repeal Nevada’s cage-free standards altogether.

In January, state lawmakers in Michigan and Colorado launched payments to just do that of their states. Colorado’s invoice is lifeless, whereas Michigan’s invoice remains to be in committee. President Donald Trump’s USDA secretary Brooke Rollins has additionally called for rolling again California’s Proposition 12, a landmark animal welfare legislation that requires eggs to be cage-free, amongst different reforms.

These efforts are a part of a a lot bigger, longer-term development trying to dismantle what little progress has been made on farm animal welfare within the US. For years, livestock industry-friendly members of Congress have pushed for the EATS Act, which might ban states from setting their very own requirements for livestock merchandise imported from different states, thereby nullifying among the most vital farm animal welfare legal guidelines within the nation.

It’s unlikely that efforts to repeal and droop cage-free egg legal guidelines will decrease egg costs, as a result of there’s already little slack within the nationwide egg provide. The entire nation is going through egg shortages, so there’s not precisely a surplus of eggs mendacity round to fill the hole in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and different states with cage-free legal guidelines. College of Arkansas agricultural economist Jada Thompson informed the Related Press final month that Nevada’s suspension could “very slightly” ease egg prices within the state, however may additionally increase costs in different states by diverting among the nationwide egg provide to Nevada.

It’s a difficulty that each egg farmers and animal welfare advocates agree on: “Repealing state bans on cages gained’t cease the unfold of hen flu,” mentioned Hannah Truxell, senior coverage counsel of the animal safety group the Humane League, in an announcement to Vox final month. “It could, nonetheless, reverse years of crucial meals {industry} progress.”

That progress is the fast transition the egg {industry} has undertaken for the reason that early 2000s, when nearly all egg-laying hens had been confined in tiny cages that restricted them from even flapping their wings, not to mention shifting round. Right this moment, 40 % of the egg {industry}’s 304 million hens are cage-free, resulting from laws in 11 US states and commitments from major food corporations, together with McDonald’s and Nestlé, to make use of solely cage-free eggs. The shift has diminished struggling for round 100 million hens yearly.

To make sure, cage-free doesn’t imply the animals have good lives — they’re nonetheless raised in huge, overcrowded, unsanitary barns, and investigations into cage-free farms have revealed horrid situations. However they’re definitely higher than typical cage farms.

Delaying or repealing the few legal guidelines that ban cages will do nothing to handle the core meals system vulnerability driving egg shortages — dependence on manufacturing unit farms. As a result of these egg farms are so huge, every housing tons of of hundreds and even millions of animals, a virus infecting only a couple operations can ship a shock to the meals provide in a single day. Delaying or tearing up cage-free legal guidelines to compensate for that vulnerability will solely additional punish animals within the relentless pursuit of low cost meals — a pursuit that’s in charge for a lot of this mess, as poultry factory farms have supercharged the bird flu virus.

As consultants increasingly worry that bird flu may boil over to create the subsequent international pandemic, now must be a time for sober reflection on the dangers manufacturing unit farming poses, slightly than a time to double down on it.

During the last century, the US pioneered the development of factory farming, which has since unfold across the globe. It has made meat, milk, and eggs extra ample and reasonably priced, however it has additionally include quite a lot of environmental, animal welfare, and public health issues, together with accelerating the unfold and virulence of H5N1.

The vast majority of America’s greater than 9 billion turkeys, chickens, and egg-laying hens are raised on manufacturing unit farms, the place the genetically related animals are overcrowded and dwell amongst their very own waste, all of which may compromise their immune techniques.

Manufacturing facility farms current a “enormous alternative” for a virus or microbe to successfully unfold, Claas Kirchhelle, a medical historian on the College Faculty Dublin, informed me.

Influenzas have lengthy circulated amongst migratory water birds, however these have traditionally been “low-pathogenic” strains, inflicting little to no injury to the wild birds who contract and unfold it. However the virus can mutate from a low-pathogenic pressure to a high-pathogenic one — which causes deadly infections in poultry birds and extra successfully spreads to people. These high-pathogenicity conversion occasions have occurred 42 times between 1959 and today — and nearly all had been first detected on poultry manufacturing unit farms.

Consultants consider that H5N1, first detected in China in 1996, transformed from low to high-pathogenicity after coming into a business poultry farm. By the early 2000s, the virus had unfold throughout the globe. The present US outbreak, now occurring three years, has mutated to trigger extreme sickness and dying in tons of of hen species, mammals akin to seals and sea lions, and, within the US, dairy cows. Greater than 70 pet cats, a lot of them residing on dairy farms, have fallen unwell from hen flu, and a few died. In December, a cheetah and a mountain lion on the Arizona zoo died from the hen flu.

Seventy Americans have contracted the virus since 2022. Most of them have been dairy or poultry farmworkers, and most circumstances have been delicate. However in January, a Louisiana resident died after publicity to yard chickens and wild birds. And this winter, a 13-year-old Canadian lady caught a extreme hen flu an infection and was hospitalized for weeks; it’s unknown how she bought it.

By means of all of it, the US poultry and dairy industries have had little incentive to vary their disease-promoting enterprise fashions.

Coverage incentives give them no purpose to: When hen flu strikes a US poultry farm, the US Division of Agriculture covers the price of the mass killing of the birds — which is commonly performed by shutting off air flow and utilizing heaters in order that the birds slowly, painfully die of heatstroke — together with the prices of carcass disposal and the market worth of the birds. Since 2022, the USDA had doled out more than $1 billion in taxpayer {dollars} to egg producers affected by the virus. Dairy producers with hen flu outbreaks are additionally paid for their losses.

These bailouts — together with the present makes an attempt to nullify or delay cage-free legal guidelines — ship a message to the {industry} that policymakers gained’t query the foundational dangers of the manufacturing unit farm system, and can as an alternative frequently accommodate for these dangers. Delaying or quickly suspending state cage-free egg legal guidelines might carry very slight, short-term reduction on egg costs, however with out pairing it with longer-term options, we’re sure to finish up right here once more, or worse. Influenza experts are increasingly concerned that the evolution and unfold of the virus over the previous few years — aided by dairy farmers unwilling to take the hen flu menace significantly and a deferential USDA — may assist to set off the subsequent international pandemic.

In a latest story for Nautilus, journalist Brandon Keim wrote that scientists he spoke with “used phrases like ‘crimson lights flashing,’ ‘completely novel ballgame,’ ‘no hope of containing,’ and ‘underneath assault.’”

There are a selection of short- and long-term steps policymakers may take to decrease the specter of hen flu.

In December, the USDA said that some producers could also be “inclined to ignore biosecurity as a result of they consider that [the USDA] will proceed to cowl the prices related to damages associated to an HPAI outbreak.” The company has proposed a rule to require that producers pass a biosecurity audit earlier than they’re eligible for indemnity funds.

However Congress may go additional by requiring producers to cowl their very own prices for mass killing and disposing of animals within the wake of illness outbreaks — a coverage that Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) proposed over two years in the past within the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act.

“Our federal agricultural coverage is designed in such a method that the manufacturing unit farm mannequin will get all the advantages and not one of the blame,” Jake Davis, a Missouri-based agricultural coverage knowledgeable and small farmer who suggested on the invoice, told Vox in 2022. “We’ve not requested the {industry} to embed the chance to our meals system that they create.”

Requiring the vaccination of egg-laying hens would assist, however elements of the poultry {industry} are involved it could disrupt commerce, whereas the USDA — on the tail finish of the Biden administration — expressed issues concerning the effectiveness of available vaccines. In February, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said the company is exploring the usage of vaccines on poultry farms however quickly walked it back. The company remains to be investing in vaccine analysis, nonetheless.

Long run, policymakers may put money into diversifying America’s protein sources — at the moment, two-thirds of our protein intake comes from animal merchandise. Fewer animals and fewer manufacturing unit farms would give avian influenza and different viruses fewer alternatives to mutate and unfold, whereas additionally benefitting the atmosphere and the animals themselves.

Congress, the USDA and FDA, and state governments helped to construct — and nonetheless assist to increase — the manufacturing unit farm system. However policymakers may select to shift the meals system in a extra plant-based course. Ahead-thinking nations like Denmark and the Netherlands are already doing so via packages to pay farmers to boost fewer animals or develop extra plant-based crops and to assist startups producing plant-based meat, milk, and egg options.

As egg costs soar, there’s been elevated urge for food for such options within the US. Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Eat Simply — the maker of a plant-based liquid egg product referred to as Just Egg, which is made with mung bean protein — informed me over electronic mail in February that product gross sales had been rising 5 occasions sooner over the earlier month than prior to now 12 months. And one of many largest US retailers, Tetrick mentioned, elevated its orders of the product by 30 % earlier this 12 months.

Simply Egg is expensive, costing about triple that of liquid eggs from a caged hen, however it’s not as a result of mung beans are costly; it’s as a result of it’s made by a startup that hasn’t achieved economies of scale, nor benefited from taxpayer bailouts or many years of presidency assist like the standard egg {industry}. If business egg farming does contribute to sparking the worldwide pandemic, investing in plant-based options will look sensible in hindsight.

Replace, March 29, 6 am ET: This story was initially revealed on February 20 and has been up to date with information that Arizona will delay its cage-free egg legislation, and that USDA secretary Brooke Rollins has referred to as for repealing California’s animal welfare legislation Proposition 12.