WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday it plans to spend up to $1 billion in Commodity Credit Corporation funds to try to reduce the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry.

The virus, also known as bird flu or H5N1, has disrupted the work of poultry farmers for years and began infecting dairy herds last year. But a recent spike in egg prices has led to renewed public attention to the disease.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the new five-point plan would implement increased biosecurity measures for poultry farms to help reduce interactions between domestic flocks and wild birds, provide funding for farmers to quickly repopulate after having to cull infected flocks, remove some regulations, import eggs from other countries and research a vaccine.

Rollins said she was “confident” that the firing of probationary federal employees and efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce wouldn’t negatively affect USDA.

“As we look to streamline and make more efficient the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will we have the resources needed to address the plan I just laid out?” she said. “We are convinced that we will, as we realign and evaluate where USDA has been spending money, where our employees are spending their time.”

The USDA scrambled earlier this month to rehire employees working on H5N1 issues, who were fired as part of government efficiency moves.

Bird flu vaccine

Rollins was lukewarm on the idea of using a vaccine to address bird flu, saying she believes the issue needs further research before the United States would potentially begin vaccinating poultry against H5N1.

“We got a lot of feedback from those who think that’s the immediate solution, and that we should be doing it,” Rollins said.

But after she “really dug in” and spoke with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and veterinarians, Rollins said she concluded there needs to be more research.

“A lot of the feedback I got was, as I mentioned, that it could be a solution,” Rollins said. “But to push that out now and require it — we’re just not ready, we don’t have enough information and we need to fully understand how it will affect the food supply.”

Details from USDA

Kailee Tkacz Buller, chief of staff at USDA, said on a call with reporters that up to $500 million of the $1 billion total investment would go toward helping farmers bolster their biosecurity measures.

The USDA plans to begin that work with egg-laying hens before expanding to other poultry farms and will cover 75% of the costs of upgrading farms with best practices, she said.

Rosemary Sifford, deputy administrator of veterinary services and chief veterinary officer at USDA’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, said on the call that the agency will help coordinate biosecurity audits for flocks that have been affected by H5N1 as well as flocks that haven’t contracted the virus.

USDA will then work with the farmers to cover that 75% share of fixing the highest risks to the poultry flocks, Sifford said.

Buller said up to $400 million of the $1 billion in Commodity Credit Corporation funds would go toward helping farmers repopulate their farms quickly with an indemnity rate “based on fair market value.”

The final pot of funding, up to $100 million, would go toward research into vaccines and therapeutics for poultry.

“We’re going to make sure that we work to limit any impact on export trade markets, if there ever were vaccinations rolled out,” Buller said.

Egg imports

USDA officials, speaking on background during the call with reporters, said that in addition to trying to find a vaccine for bird flu and helping farmers with biosecurity measures, the department is working to bolster egg imports.

One of the USDA officials said they were laying the groundwork to increase the number of eggs coming from the nation of Türkiye from about 70 million to 420 million annually.

The official didn’t provide many details about the arrangement other than to say it will last until egg prices within the United States go down and that the USDA would not subsidize any private purchases.

An official declined to answer a question about whether that would mean no tariffs on eggs coming into the country.

“This is just an opportunity for us to have the conversation,” the official said. “So we’ll continue to have those discussions.”

This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.