\n<\/p>\n
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nearly a million chickens packed the barns at Howe\u2019s Hens last Christmas Eve when the first of them tested positive for bird flu. The deadly virus spreads so fast that even if only one hen is infected, farmers are legally obligated to kill all of the others. Massive mounds of carcasses soon appeared outside the Ohio egg farm, covered in compost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The slaughter wasn\u2019t enough. The virus tore through industrial barns in Darke County and moved on through one of the most poultry-dense regions in America, crossing the state line into Indiana. Rows of raised earth became a familiar sight alongside the roads that crisscrossed the plains. The air stank of death, recalled cafe owner Deborah Mertz: \u201cThe smell of every bird in Mercer County, rotting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Agriculture urged farmers to follow a longstanding playbook that assumes that bird flu is spread by wild birds and tracked into barns with lax safety practices. The agency blamed the outbreak on \u201cshared people and equipment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Three years into a brutal wave of the virus, industry leaders raised evidence that bird flu was entering barns differently and evading even the strictest protocols. They suspected it could be airborne <\/strong>and begged officials to deploy a proven weapon against the disease: a vaccine for poultry.<\/p>\n The USDA didn\u2019t do that or explore their theory, and its playbook failed: In just three months, the virus that erupted in a single Ohio farm spread to flocks with over 18 million hens \u2014 5% of America\u2019s egg layers. All were killed to try to stop the contagion, and egg prices hit historic highs, surpassing the previous fall\u2019s spike, which Donald Trump had cited as a massive failure of economic leadership in his successful campaign for the presidency.<\/p>\n A sign in a grocery store in New York City in January notifies customers of an egg shortage due to bird flu.<\/span> Lindsey Nicholson\/UCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n After a quiet summer, bird flu is on the move again, and experts say it poses an escalating threat. While the virus doesn\u2019t appear capable of spreading from human to human, it has killed people exposed to sick poultry. This year, the United States saw its first death from bird flu, a Louisiana senior with a flock of backyard chickens.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Viruses are constantly evolving, and if a person catches bird flu while infected with a seasonal flu, the pathogens could mutate into a variant that infects large numbers of people. \u201cThe minute it transmits in humans, it\u2019s done,\u201d warned Erin Sorrell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.\u00a0<\/p>\n Given the stakes \u2014 and the government\u2019s limited investigation of this winter\u2019s outbreak \u2014 ProPublica set out to examine the USDA\u2019s continuing conviction that the spread of the virus can sufficiently be curbed by its safety practices.<\/p>\n To trace precisely how the virus rippled through more than 80 farms in the region, ProPublica analyzed data on the genetics of the virus, satellite imagery, wind simulations, property records and trade notices and consulted with researchers whose peer-reviewed work previously found that the virus can spread on floating feathers and particles of dust. (Read more about the effort here.)<\/p>\n ProPublica found that virus samples taken from outbreak sites shared a unique genetic signature.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\tSources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department Our finding: The wind was at least a plausible explanation for how the virus could have spread from farm to farm.\u00a0<\/p>\n We shared our analysis of the outbreak with eight experts in avian flu who agreed with that assessment. Several of them felt it was more than a mere possibility.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just seems so likely to me that this was an airborne thing,\u201d said Brian McCluskey, former chief epidemiologist with USDA\u2019s agency that oversees the response to bird flu. \u201cI mean, how else would it have moved around so quickly?\u201d<\/p>\n The experts stressed the analysis didn\u2019t prove the wind directly carried bird flu from one farm to another, or that it was the only factor at play. The virus typically spreads via multiple routes, which could include contaminated birds, rodents or workers; if farms share the same feed supplier or trash collector, those factors can\u2019t be ruled out.<\/p>\n But several experts said ProPublica\u2019s analysis underscores the shortcomings of the government\u2019s strategy, which fails to take the wind into account at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUSDA has been grossly negligent in not establishing risk factors in real time,\u201d said Simon Shane, a poultry veterinarian and consultant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other nations have taken a different approach. After a devastating outbreak in France, researchers there discovered bird flu was traveling on dust and aerosols. France began vaccinating its ducks in 2023 and saw a near-total reduction in bird flu cases.<\/p>\n While American chickens are routinely vaccinated against all sorts of pathogens, USDA officials haven\u2019t authorized similar efforts for bird flu, saying they could harm trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n The agency is echoing arguments by the chicken meat industry, which outproduces and outlobbies the egg industry and has been far less impacted by bird flu.\u00a0<\/p>\n The meat exporters and their congressional allies have long warned that vaccinating even just egg-laying chickens could cause other countries to block all imports of American poultry, deeming the entire country a bird flu risk. Trade agreements generally require a guarantee that imported poultry is free of bird flu, and some countries including the United States fear that vaccination might not fully prevent infections, allowing the virus to quietly spread among flocks and linger in meat.<\/p>\n Adding to the headwinds is U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said the virus should be allowed to burn through flocks so that farmers can identify birds with natural immunity, an approach public health experts have called \u201cdangerous and unethical.\u201d<\/p>\n Rows of buried chickens killed in an effort to stamp out an outbreak of bird flu at a Weaver Eggs farm in Versailles, Ohio, in June<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n A USDA spokesperson said it was \u201cconjecture\u201d to say vaccination would offer flocks better protection from airborne spread than its current strategy, which \u201cremains rooted in real-time data, internationally recognized best practices and a commitment to transparency and continuous improvement.\u201d\u00a0 The agency told ProPublica it has made no decision on whether to vaccinate hens and has no timeline on when it might announce one \u2014 though it is \u201cproactively assessing\u201d the possibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Avoiding the question of airborne spread appears to be in the USDA\u2019s \u201cbest interests,\u201d said Michelle Kromm, an animal health consultant who directed Jennie-O Turkey\u2019s bird flu response in past outbreaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf this is a major risk factor, then vaccine is absolutely a critical mitigation to put on the table,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that, of course, is something USDA still is not, after a decade, prepared to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The United States faced a similar crisis a decade ago when bird flu hit over 200 Midwestern farms within the span of a few months. After genetic testing revealed that the virus had mostly spread from farm to farm, the USDA sought to determine how.\u00a0<\/p>\n Epidemiologists looked for patterns among those hit by the virus and not, like whether vehicles had visited multiple farms or whether barns had easy-to-clean concrete entryways. Ultimately, no factor answered the question of whether a farm\u2019s poultry would be infected as well as its proximity to a farm with infected poultry.\u00a0<\/p>\n USDA scientists, including McCluskey, found virus spewing out of the exhaust fans on \u00a0farms with infected birds and said more should be done to fully assess the risk of airborne spread. But because the USDA couldn\u2019t determine exactly how the virus got into farms, it concluded it couldn\u2019t say with certainty whether airborne transmission played a role.\u00a0<\/p>\n The virus disappeared for years after that, but the government came up with a strategy to curb future outbreaks. It focused on keeping infectious materials from being carried onto farms using a method called biosecurity.<\/p>\n The USDA turned to the National Poultry Improvement Plan, a consortium of producers and government officials formed in the 1930s to combat the spread of a disease caused by salmonella. The group, which certifies poultry operators who take part in efforts to prevent disease in their flocks, developed guidelines for more uniform biosecurity practices, emphasizing concepts like \u201clines of separation\u201d \u2014 areas where farmers would decontaminate before crossing and handling birds.<\/p>\n Biosecurity signs outside a Fortkamp Farms facility in Fort Recovery, Ohio, in May<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n These protocols are now required for farmers who seek reimbursement for chickens they have to cull amid an outbreak. They are urged to seal holes in their barns to keep out wild birds, make sure they don\u2019t track goose droppings on their shoes and be mindful that workers who travel through multiple farms can carry bird flu from one to another.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2022, a new strain of bird flu began infecting American flocks. About a year into the outbreak, officials noted a striking difference in their statistics: While farm-to-farm spread was responsible for 70% of the 2015 outbreaks, only 15% of cases originated from other farms. Industry and USDA officials concluded biosecurity was a resounding success.<\/p>\n But the government\u2019s 15% statistic was not the big win for biosecurity that it suggested, ProPublica found.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike the 2015 wave, which almost exclusively hit commercial farms, the majority of new infection sites were backyard or hobby farms raising just a few chickens, wide open to the threat of a new strain infecting a more diverse array of wild birds.<\/p>\n But hundreds of commercial farms were still hit by the virus this time around. And had the USDA published comparisons on those farms, a much different picture would have emerged. ProPublica obtained infection data from 2022, when bird flu arrived, through November 2023 (the period covered by a request under the Freedom of Information Act) and found that about 40% of infections on commercial premises were associated with genetically linked clusters. Despite a heavier emphasis on biosecurity, the disease was still moving among farms.<\/p>\n Since then, the threat to farms has gotten a good deal more complicated and the spread among them more significant.<\/p>\n The virus was discovered in dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas in March 2024 and has since been found in more than 1,000 cattle herds. That strain of the virus doesn\u2019t appear to spread in the wild birds often blamed for circulating bird flu, USDA officials told ProPublica. Nevertheless, that strain, called B3.13, has somehow jumped to nearby poultry farms. Millions of birds have been killed after viruses matching those found in nearby dairies infiltrated their flocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Milk samples are tested for bird flu at Cornell University on Dec. 10, 2024, in Ithaca, New York. The strain of the virus infected over 1,000 dairy cattle herds, occasionally spilling over and infecting birds at nearby poultry farms.<\/span> Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n From then until late this summer, 73% of infections on poultry farms appeared to have originated on another farm. In spite of years of strengthening biosecurity, the nation\u2019s farms were in the same place as they were a decade ago, when 70% of outbreaks stemmed from other farms.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does increased biosecurity do? After three years, it ain\u2019t enough,\u201d said Gail Hansen, a former Kansas state public health veterinarian and epidemiologist who now works as a veterinary consultant. \u201cWhy are we doing the same thing over and over again?\u201d<\/p>\n The USDA prefers to look at the entire span of this wave \u2014 going all the way back to 2022 and including those backyard farms \u2014 to reiterate its position that the \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d of infections have been traced to contact with infected wild birds \u2014 not spread among farms. It said this winter\u2019s outbreak was \u201cnot representative\u201d and was \u201cunique.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson also said that the \u201cbest defense\u201d against indirect virus transmission of any kind is still \u201cstrong biosecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n Wild birds likely introduced the virus to Howe\u2019s Hens outbreak in December, but that\u2019s where their role ended. Every one of the farms that fell from that moment on was infected by another farm, the USDA confirmed. What\u2019s in dispute is how.<\/p>\n Egg producers argued that biosecurity failures weren\u2019t solely to blame for the millions of hens lost to the virus that season. \u201cThere are breeder farms out there that are considered to be bulletproof that this virus is finding its way inside somehow,\u201d Oscar Garrison, United Egg Producers\u2019 head of food safety, said at a USDA trade conference in February.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the vast majority of egg farms, he said, infections started with chickens close to air inlets and on upper levels, far from where virus tracked in on shoes and clothes would end up. An Ohio egg farmer told ProPublica the same happened at their large facility; experts said such a pattern would likely emerge if the virus was spreading through the air.<\/p>\n The circumstances were ripe for it. A veterinarian with Cooper Farms, the company that runs or contracts with the majority of the poultry farms in the region, described how the process of killing huge flocks releases a mess of feathers into the air.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had teams out there just picking feathers outside of these barns,\u201d veterinarian Bethany Heitkamp said in February at the Ohio Pork Congress, an industry conference.<\/p>\n Infected carcasses tend to drop feathers \u2014 \u201cand feathers, they stick to everything,\u201d USDA poultry researcher Erica Spackman said at another industry forum. \u201cThey\u2019re airborne on their own. So there\u2019s a lot of opportunity for spread there.\u201d<\/p>\n Aerial imagery over four western Ohio farms in March shows the toll of the virus\u2019 impact on poultry stock after reports of infections in the region started in December.<\/p>\n \n\t\tA graphic containing a grid of satellite imagery, taken in March, of four western Ohio farms, where farmers buried between 245,000 and 1.8 million dead hens in dirt mounds on their properties.\n\t<\/p>\n Farmers culled and buried at<\/p>\n least 1.3 million hens under<\/p>\n dozens of dirt mounds<\/p>\n More than 931,000 hens buried<\/p>\n Jeff and Kyle<\/p>\n Fortkamp Poultry<\/p>\n About 245,000<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n More than<\/p>\n 1.8 million<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Farmers culled and buried<\/p>\n at least 1.3 million hens<\/p>\n under dozens of dirt mounds<\/p>\n More than 931,000 hens buried<\/p>\n Jeff and Kyle<\/p>\n Fortkamp Poultry<\/p>\n About 245,000 hens buried<\/p>\n More than<\/p>\n 1.8 million<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Farmers culled and buried<\/p>\n at least 1.3 million hens<\/p>\n under dozens of dirt mounds<\/p>\n More than 931,000 hens buried<\/p>\n Jeff and Kyle<\/p>\n Fortkamp Poultry<\/p>\n About 245,000 hens buried<\/p>\n More than<\/p>\n 1.8 million<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Farmers culled and buried<\/p>\n at least 1.3 million hens<\/p>\n under dozens of dirt mounds<\/p>\n More than 931,000 hens buried<\/p>\n More than<\/p>\n 1.8 million<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Jeff and Kyle <\/p>\n Fortkamp Poultry<\/p>\n About 245,000<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Farmers culled and buried<\/p>\n at least 1.3 million hens<\/p>\n under dozens of dirt mounds<\/p>\n More than 931,000 hens buried<\/p>\n More than<\/p>\n 1.8 million<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n Jeff and Kyle<\/p>\n Fortkamp Poultry<\/p>\n About 245,000<\/p>\n hens buried<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tNote: Map scales vary due to zoom levels. Sources: Darke County auditor, ProPublica reporting. After the virus spilled into nearby Indiana, the state\u2019s head of avian health began to notice a pattern: If a farm had an outbreak and the wind was blowing hard that day, she could expect to hear news about another farm needing to test dead hens five to seven days later. \u201cThen, what do you know, the lab calls, saying it\u2019s positive,\u201d Maria Cooper told members of the Board of Animal Health at a meeting that spring.<\/p>\n Cooper Farms declined to speak to ProPublica and instructed all of its contracted farmers to do the same. But in a recent episode of the industry podcast \u201cEggheads,\u201d one of its employees described what it felt like to be in the thick of the outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cole Luthman remembered fielding calls from poultry workers who had learned their neighboring farms had been infected. \u201cCan I make it through it?\u201d he recalled them asking. \u201cAnd they\u2019d be a half-mile down the road, basically right in the wind direction of the other farm that had just broken.\u201d He told them to control what they could and that if they survived a week, they\u2019d be okay. \u201cAnd most of the farms would start seeing signs within seven days,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was just devastating. Everybody felt helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n As officials publicly pinned the blame on wild geese, rumors spread that drones hovering overhead were spraying the virus, perhaps controlled by foreign adversaries. Versions of the theory persisted long after authorities ruled it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t fill the void with scientific information, people are going to fill the void,\u201d said Kromm, the animal health consultant and former turkey industry executive. \u201cThis is people\u2019s livelihoods, and the lack of the ability to use science that\u2019s out there to at least make an attempt to help explain things to them is super frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n The USDA said it didn\u2019t investigate whether airborne spread played a role in the outbreak. A spokesperson said the agency has explored wind in other cases but faced \u201csignificant challenges\u201d that included \u201cthe inability to rule out other potential mechanisms of disease spread.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than investigating wind patterns, the USDA deployed a standard questionnaire asking farmers about who and what had come on and off the farm. The responses revealed \u201cnumerous movements\u201d that the USDA said posed a risk of \u201cindirect transmission.\u201d The agency would not elaborate or provide more specific information, but noted that ProPublica\u2019s analysis does not account for links \u201csuch as shared workers, equipment, or feed deliveries\u201d that could have contributed to the spread.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this time, there is no compelling evidence that indicates aerial transmission poses a greater risk than other known transmission routes,\u201d said a USDA spokesperson.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studies continue to support the theory that the wind is carrying the virus from farm to farm. Research in France that helped prompt policymakers to vaccinate flocks found dust laden with virus that came from infected farms. More recent work has established the density of farms as a key risk of viral spread in France\u2019s duck-farming regions, which authors said \u201csuggests that contaminated dust or feathers could reach neighbouring farms.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps the strongest evidence comes from the Czech Republic, where earlier this year a team of scientists mapped the spread of the virus from a duck farm to two \u201chigh-biosecurity\u201d chicken farms 5 miles away. They used genomic and meteorological information to show that \u201cwind was the most probable mechanism of infection transmission.\u201d<\/p>\n Alexander Nagy, the Czech researcher who led the study, was among the experts with whom ProPublica discussed our analysis of the Midwestern outbreak. Nagy said the data assembled by ProPublica \u201cstrongly suggests that wind may have played a significant role in facilitating viral spread between farms\u201d as it had in the cluster he investigated.<\/p>\n Rows of buried chickens outside a poultry farm in Fort Recovery, Ohio, in May<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n As hens died in record numbers in February, Tony Wesner, CEO of Rose Acre Farms, spoke to Congress about the difference vaccines had made against other scourges.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at diseases that we have had in the poultry industry in the past, the only way to get past it was through vaccine,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to control this disease. We have to do it with offense, not defense, which in my opinion is what we have done to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n The government has had a proven poultry vaccine against this strain of the bird flu since July 2023, when USDA scientists concluded several available vaccines provided full protection against death and illness and reduced the shedding of virus in infected chickens. Trade has been among the biggest barriers to using it.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the egg industry asked newly minted Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to \u201cbring a new sense of urgency\u201d to address the question of vaccination, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to her on behalf of the chicken meat industry, warning of a $10 billion economic loss if USDA authorized a vaccine. \u201cIf an egg-laying hen in Michigan is vaccinated,\u201d they wrote, \u201cthe U.S. right now would likely be unable to export an unvaccinated broiler chicken from Mississippi.\u201d<\/p>\n The scenario isn\u2019t farfetched. After France vaccinated its ducks, the U.S. paused all poultry imports from the European Union, deeming much of the continent a risk because the vaccine could mask the presence of bird flu. The main way the virus is detected is by noticing dead birds; if vaccinated birds get infected but don\u2019t die, the logic goes, how would anyone know whether the virus is spreading?<\/p>\n A car wash used as part of biosecurity measures at the North Arlington Processing complex in Arlington, Arizona<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not a risk the chicken meat industry is willing to take; it has lost only a tiny share of its chickens to bird flu and wouldn\u2019t have a practical way to vaccinate them anyway. While egg-laying chickens are often in production for at least two years, broiler chickens are slaughtered within two months.<\/p>\n Wesner, the egg company CEO, argued that a large share of exported chicken meat went to countries that already vaccinate against bird flu. \u201cI cannot understand why we cannot get together with those countries and figure this out so we do not ruin trade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Vaccine proponents were heartened early in the Trump administration when the USDA licensed a chicken vaccine developed by Zoetis. But soon after, in an interview with Breitbart News, Rollins dashed their hopes that it would be used any time soon.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like a very simple and easy and quick answer but ultimately the repercussions that we don\u2019t fully understand could be so significant that we just have to go in a different direction,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a tremendous amount of work to do before we would even consider that as a potential solution and that is at least a year or more away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She said she\u2019d spoken with Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, who is a veterinarian: \u201cHe said to me, \u2018Brooke, don\u2019t ever forget, the virus always wins.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pillen said in a March interview that vaccines would still allow the virus to spread and mutate, posing a threat for the disease to spread to people. \u201cUsing a vaccine would be absolutely catastrophic because there\u2019s no vaccine that\u2019s effective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kennedy echoed the sentiment in an interview with Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity, saying that vaccination would turn flocks into \u201cmutation factories.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts in avian influenza say the opposite is true. Not vaccinating poultry means that the virus has more opportunities to infect humans and adapt, said Richard Webby, an influenza researcher at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital. \u201cThese are the interfaces where we know transmission occurs,\u201d he said of poultry farms.\u00a0<\/p>\n And while it isn\u2019t guaranteed to prevent all infections, vaccination makes them much less likely and lowers the chances that they will spread because the birds wouldn\u2019t shed as much virus, said David Swayne, the former head of the USDA\u2019s poultry research unit. \u201cIt makes the chickens or turkeys very, very resistant to infection.\u201d<\/p>\n Swayne helped the egg industry craft a vaccination plan, which would include testing vaccinated birds to ensure the virus isn\u2019t spreading undetected. Such surveillance is essential, said Jean-Luc Gu\u00e9rin, one of the researchers who helped convince French officials to vaccinate the country\u2019s ducks. It has been more cost-effective, too; vaccinating and regularly testing the ducks cost $120 million after the first year, compared with the $1.6 billion the disease response cost in the outbreaks in 2021 and 2022. The government and industry are sharing the cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two people cradle a small yellow duckling while it is injected with a metal device attached to a white tube. <\/span> Gaizka Iroz\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n After France showed the surveillance strategy worked, the USDA resumed poultry imports from the European Union in January.<\/p>\n But USDA is in no rush to copy it. \u201cAny potential vaccination strategy must account for complex logistical challenges \u2014 including administration, expanded surveillance, and associated costs \u2014 that must be carefully evaluated alongside scientific considerations,\u201d a spokesperson told ProPublica. The agency says it is supporting research on \u201cadvanced vaccines to reduce transmission, protect poultry and stabilize food prices\u201d and notes on its website that it is assessing \u201cpromising candidates in coordination with HHS,\u201d Kennedy\u2019s agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recognize there are multiple stakeholders,\u201d said Garrison of United Egg Producers, \u201cand those conversations are ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n Glenn Hickman, whose Arizona egg operation has lost over 6 million birds to the disease over the last 12 months, is losing patience. As he begins to move a new group of young hens into a layer barn, he fears he can\u2019t fully protect them. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying because, again, we haven\u2019t vaccinated, so nothing\u2019s different,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it was just that there\u2019s no cure, then, OK, it\u2019s just your luck of the draw. But the fact is that there\u2019s a tool in our toolbox that\u2019s affordable, available, and we can\u2019t use it.\u201d<\/p>\n Glenn Hickman at his farm in Arlington, Arizona<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n It would cost $33 million to vaccinate in America\u2019s turkey and egg industries, according to Jada Thompson, an agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas who worked on a report for the USDA. Rollins has committed to spending up to $500 million on audits of farms\u2019 biosecurity and special inspections to examine where wild birds might be infiltrating farms, with some money to \u201cfix the highest risk biosecurity concerns,\u201d $100 million for research that could involve vaccines and another $400 million to keep reimbursing farmers for birds they have to kill. The government has already spent well over $1 billion on such reimbursements since 2022.<\/p>\n Experts told ProPublica they believe that decision-makers at the USDA are just stalling in hopes that the virus fizzles out, as it did a decade ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think their inability and unwillingness to do this stems from a disbelief that this is something that they are going to have to deal with over the long term,\u201d said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. \u201cI think they\u2019re hoping that this just goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n Around this time last year, at the start of a new bird flu season, only 26 commercial poultry farms had been struck. This fall, however, 78 have already fallen.<\/p>\n Hickman walks through his empty chicken barns in Arlington, Arizona, in September, after a bird flu outbreak earlier this year wiped out about 6 million birds.<\/span> Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reporting Highlights Gone With The Wind: After a bird flu outbreak tore through Midwestern barns, killing hens and spiking egg prices, the USDA didn\u2019t investigate whether the virus was airborne. ProPublica did.\u00a0 \u201cSeems So Likely\u201d: Experts say ProPublica\u2019s analysis offers a plausible explanation for how the wind could have helped spread the virus, exposing a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[4254,14318,4255,558,1716,247,6551,811],"class_list":{"0":"post-34373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-bird","9":"tag-dismissing","10":"tag-flu","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-pandemic","13":"tag-propublica","14":"tag-seed","15":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\tof Agriculture, Darke County (Ohio) Auditor, Mercer County (Ohio) Auditor,
\n\t\t\tJay County (Ind.) Assessor’s Office, National Poultry Improvement
\n\t\t\tPlan.<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\nThe \u201cBest Defense\u201d<\/h3>\n
\u201cRight in the Wind Direction\u201d<\/h3>\n
Widespread Chicken Deaths Forced Farmers to Dig Miles of Mass Graves<\/h3>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe Only Way to Get Past It\u201d<\/h3>\n