Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Avian influenza vaccines have long been available. Animal health company Zoetis announced on Friday that it had received a conditional license from the USDA for a new vaccine. But using it would be up to federal authorities in partnership with the industry, the company said in a statement. Other manufacturers are also working on them.

Dr. Carol Cardona, a bird flu expert at the University of Minnesota, said tighter biosecurity to prevent cross-contamination and limit outbreaks to one barn “requires an incredible amount of work on the ground,” she said…

For “precision depopulation” to work, she said, there must be effective barriers to transmission between barns, such as ensuring that farm workers don’t carry the virus on their boots or clothes. And workers need to be alert for the earliest signs of abnormal deaths, she added.

Another barrier is the logistical difficulty in giving shots to up to 3 million birds or more at a single egg farm. Current vaccines are all injectables. Farms might opt to limit them to new pullets coming onto a farm, she said.

Vaccines that could be economically administered through a farm’s water supply would require new innovations, Cardona said. But until there’s a market for vaccines, she said, there won’t be an incentive to develop them…

In an ideal world, keeping three million birds poultry production units penned up in a single facility would not happen. Welcome to capitalism, comrade! Any and all solutions to this problem are going to cost money… and even that might not be enough.

From farms to bakeries, egg shortages and price hikes are challenging small businesses https://t.co/PHrlaJrkNC

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 18, 2025

… Most owners are taking the increase in stride, looking at it as just one of many hurdles they constantly face. But if the problem persists, they could be forced to raise prices or adjust their products…

“It’s not just the cost of eggs, right? It’s also just the availability,” she said. She prefers to buy medium-sized white shelled eggs, buying a box with 18 dozen eggs, but two weeks ago those were unavailable, so she had to buy brown eggs in individual cartons of 12.

“It sounds kind of silly, but when I I’m the sole proprietor and I have a huge volume of work, to have to take a dozen of eggs out of my walk-in at a time as opposed to a flat of eggs, it’s just it’s a pain,” she said…

At Daisies, a pasta restaurant in Chicago, chef/partner Joe Frillman and chef/partner Leigh Omilinsky haven’t raised prices but are thinking of adjusting menu items.

Omilinsky said she is thinking of adding more vegan and egg-free deserts to the menu and has been working more with flax seeds. She said the shortage has made her more conscious of the ingredients she is using and wasting less.

“You know, if we need egg yolks we are absolutely saving those whites,” she said.

Meanwhile, Frillman said the restaurant has shifted to making pastas that use less eggs.

“We’ve just changed the shape of the noodle,” he said. “We use an extruder which is a piece of equipment that allows us to basically extrude pasta without eggs.”…

“We have a pappardelle on our menu that’s been on since day one,” he said. “If this gets to the point where it’s just cost prohibitive, it’s very egg yolk heavy, we would then transfer to something like a spaghetti or a fettuccine that is a similar noodle that we can make without eggs.”…

Meanwhile, Stephanie Maynard, co-owner of Ox Hollow Farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, faces a different issue: skyrocketing demand.

The farm she owns with her husband produces beef, pork, poultry, eggs and vegetables. They have 950 laying hens, with 300 more coming in March. The winter is generally a quieter time as the farm prepares for busy spring and summer months, increasing the inventory on hand until it is ready to sell. But this year, they’re rushing to increase egg production for customers at greenmarkets.

People who might normally buy eggs at supermarkets are turning to greenmarkets due to the shortages, and regular customers are increasing their orders just to make sure they have eggs, she said…

"[Avian flu] can kill chickens within 2 days—it's rapid..What do you have in place right now to prevent the spread to the rest of the flock? If there's nothing there, the rest of the birds will die a painful death w/ attendant suffering w/i the next week” https://t.co/EK0RKHwF04

— Amesh Adalja (@AmeshAA) February 17, 2025

Speaking of ‘greenmarket’ production, another mood-spoiler from the Washington Post — “Bird flu fears have backyard chicken coop owners on edge for what’s next”: [gift link]

On her picturesque farm in the suburbs of Chicago, Kimberly Henny is used to having visitors drop by to snap up fresh eggs, honey and vegetables. But as concerns over bird flu ripple across the country, Henny and her family are now accustomed to chasing away uninvited guests — the Canada geese and other migratory birds that like to gather on the golf course next door.

Henny, 44, said she and her husband spot the geese through the window and can only pray they pass by their small-scale “hobby” farm. She’s worried that geese and other wild waterfowl carrying highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, could infect her free-range chickens and wipe out the flock — and the economic tentpole of her family’s small operation.

“It’s terrifying. Eggs are our number-one business,” Henny said. “But we also have two little kids; we live here on the farm and we also don’t want to get sick.”

For owners of small flocks that range from backyard coops to small egg farms, anxieties are already high over an ongoing avian flu outbreak that some experts predict could worsen as spring approaches and wild birds migrate. But even as disease fears grow, record-high egg prices are spurring people with no experience in raising chickens to start backyard flocks of their own.

HPAI has infected more than 1,550 combined commercial and backyard flocks since it was first confirmed in commercial flocks two years ago. In the past 30 days alone, nearly 160 combined backyard and commercial flocks have been affected, according to data from the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. In January, a Louisiana man who was older than 65 and had underlying health conditions was the first known human to die in the outbreak, though the disease is generally considered low-risk for humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Infected birds can transmit the virus in respiratory droplets and secretions like saliva and feces, while other animals pick up the virus from contaminated sources such as chicken feed, soil, water dishes and cages.

Cardona warns that the current threat level is only likely to rise as spring approaches; chickens spend more time outdoors (sunlight stimulates their egg production) and wild birds will pack migratory flyways.

Once a single bird is infected, it can be all but impossible to stop the spread in a large commercial flock or a backyard setting, Cardona said…