California hasn’t seen a recurrence of widespread bird flu at poultry and egg ranches in the state since early this year. Kings,Fresno,Tulare and Kern counties lost millions of birds to the disease in late 2024. In early 2022 a new outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) hit flocks of egg-laying hens across the United States, leading to almost continuous outbreaks across multiple states. These outbreaks, and the subsequent loss of hens due to the disease and the long-standing “depopulation” program intended to eradicate the disease, have led to the loss of more than 60 million U.S. egg-laying hens from 2022 through 2024. In California, the disease led to the destruction of around 10.6 million laying hens, with another 1 million table-egg pullets (young hens about to start laying) also destroyed, says UC Davis.
But now is the crisis over?
No. In nearby Arizona, the industry has been hit hard again this May and June with losses of around 6 million birds at the state’s largest egg ranches. At one of the hardest hit, Hickman’s Egg Ranch, 95% of the company’s Arizona chickens have been lost to avian flu.
The newspaper Arizona Republic writes that owner Glenn Hickman states “the outbreak and loss of egg-laying hens means for the first time in 81 years, the company will not be able to fulfill all of its customer demand.” The company employs about 850 people, and hundreds are expected to lose their jobs. In 2024 the company was also hit by the nationwide spread of bird flu as well.Wild bird migration is considered the source of the virus that can be spread airborne.
Vaccination for bird flu
Vaccination could have prevented widespread death, Hickman suggests. He adds that the meat bird industry’s lobbying efforts against an avian flu vaccine for the nationwide outbreak.The broiler industry, which supplies meat to foreign countries as well as the United States, has opposed the use of an avian flu vaccine for birds because some foreign countries will not buy vaccinated meat, Hickman told the paper.
“If Hickman’s chickens had been vaccinated when the company had been lobbying for it in January, the effect of the outbreak “would have been significantly decreased”, Hickman said. The Arizona Department of Agriculture has been lobbying the federal government to begin a vaccination pilot program, he said, but the ultimate decision will be made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Hickman notes poultry ranchers vaccinate chickens already for other diseases like chickenpox and USDA has tested a vaccine that could be used to inoculate birds against the bird flu”so we can start protecting our flocks in this country.”
Nationwide, the bird flu has cost millions of dollars not just to the industry but the public forced to pay sky-high egg prices due to significant shortages. Nationwide,a dozen eggs cost more than $8 a dozen as of this March before falling to $2.70 average now.For the industry, taxpayers pick up the tab for the lost birds with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spending $1.25 billion on payments to farmers since the outbreak started in 2022.
Hickman Eggs is a partner in the Kern County-based Central Valley Eggs company, one of California’s largest. That ranch near Wasco also was hit last year by the bird flu that wiped out 2 million birds there. This was just one of the egg and meat chicken ranches in the Valley that resulted in the losses last fall. One report claims that Central Valley Eggs received $10 million in compensation from USDA. Central Valley Eggs suffered a fire at their Wasco facility July 1 of this year that reportedly resulted in no loss of birds or harm to people.
Now many egg ranchers and industry experts fear the return of bird flu in 2025 as fall approaches and the annual north/south bird migration gets underway.California could be the epicenter again.
Bird migration starts August 1
The fall migration period generally runs from August 1 to November 30, peaking from September 1 to November 15, as millions of birds travel south along the Pacific Flyway to their wintering grounds or use the state as a stopover point.The Central Valley is often the super highway south with pit stops from Sacramnto to Tulare Lake to Kern County
Last year California was the hardest hit of all the states not only at poultry farms but at Central Valley dairies where farms were quarantined for months; some cows died, and production suffered and is still down. A UC Davis paperestimates that California milk production fell by 6.4%, 10.3%, and 8.4% in October, November, and December 2024, compared to what would have occurred without the disease. Workers in both industries caught the flu but most human cases have been mild.
Industry newspaper Egg News calls the likely return of the virus “inevitable”, reporting that Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as the 23rd Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the first administration of President Trump is critical of the current administration’s approach led by Rober F. Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine stance.
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Gottlieb says Kennedy, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services advanced the suggestion that HPAI should be allowed to spread unchecked through flocks in the hope that a few survivors would express genes for resistance to avian influenza.
Gottlieb points out that “We have vaccines for bird flu made by American companies and used overseas but so far federal officials don’t seem poised to use them here.” He points to” the deployment of vaccines in France, China and Mexico among other nations and cast doubt on the various distortions of science advanced by opponents of vaccination to support ongoing exports of broiler leg quarters.”
“The avian influenza strains now in circulation have persisted continuously among birds and mammals for nearly two years and there’s growing evidence that it could become a permanent feature of North America – part of a new normal to which the poultry industry must inevitably adjust for both the physical and economic health of Americans.”
EggNews points out that “Newcastle disease (VVND=END) in Europe, Asia and Africa was in every way as catastrophic as avian influenza but was effectively controlled principally by vaccination supported by biosecurity.”