Claims recent ‘5-prong strategy’ to fight bird flu showing some success
By Madeline Combs, Storm Lake Times Pilot
Iowa-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says her ‘five pronged strategy’ to combat bird flu has already proven early success.
But the road to recovery is still long and uncertain.
During her first visit to Iowa since her confirmation as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture as appointed by President Donald Trump, Rollins credited her efforts for developments like the nearly 60% decrease of egg prices in the last month.
”Certainly, if our friends from the big cities and urban areas weren’t paying attention to farming before, they sure are now,” Rollins told the press Monday during her stop at Beck’s Hybrids, a grain storage facility in Colfax. “Their cost of eggs under the last administration went up 237%, the average cost of groceries was in the mid 20% so it’s gone up.”
In late February, Rollins announced a five part guide for the USDA to follow to combat avian influenza, when egg prices were nearing record highs and mass layoffs hit the USDA.
As of March 17, the wholesale price of eggs fell to $4.83, down from the peak of over $8.50 reported on Feb. 28. Initial relief largely came from a decrease in reported bird flu cases and less consumer demand, the USDA’s market analysis reflected.
“Slowing [bird flu] outbreaks are leading to improved supply availability and wholesale market prices have responded with sharp declines over the past week,” the USDA wrote.
Although wholesale egg prices have shown some decline, the reflection of changed wholesale prices may not appear in retail prices for a few weeks. While lower egg prices should provide some relief for consumers, the extent to which consumers will feel that relief is unclear.
Rollins also explained that one of the other ‘prongs’ in the response effort would explore the possibility of importing eggs from other countries to ease short-term stress on consumers.
Jim Roth, Director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said it’s too early to see any more tangible results from the government’s efforts to curb the outbreak besides declining egg prices.
”We have to wait and see what impact those things will have,” he said.
Rollins is also pushing to lift current regulations for egg laying facilities to initiate a faster repopulation of their flocks “to get eggs back into the system.”
Roth previously told the Times-Pilot that repopulating flocks after they are culled is challenging and takes time. They often cannot produce at the same volume they once could for many months.
Rollins claims her initiative is a way to bring poultry producers and egg-laying facilities back to the production level they once performed at before avian flu infections.
“We’re looking at every rule that increased the cost of business for our poultry farmers across the country, and we’ve already begun to repeal some of those and pull them back,” she said Monday.
One of those rules was line speed for pork and poultry production facilities as a way to “allow them to move more quickly.”
“There are a lot of promises, and it remains to be seen what will happen and what will help. But it’s a very difficult situation,” Roth said of Rollins’ strategy. “They’ve proposed various potential remedies and activities, we need to wait and see and let them play out to see what happens. We’ve got to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.”
Biosecurity support, vaccine research funding
On March 18, the New York Times reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s secretary of health and human services, said in recent interviews that farmers and poultry producers should let the virus sweep through flocks to identify those that are immune rather than culling all birds.
Secretary Rollins voiced her support for the idea. But Roth says it would be a “disaster” and would give the virus free reign to spread rapidly.
“One lesson that the industry and the federal and state regulatory authorities agreed upon after the 2015 HPAI outbreak is that it was essential to depopulate the infected flocks as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours, to limit virus replication and spread,” Roth explained. “The virus will typically kill 90% of poultry, and the remainder are seriously ill.”
He also said that, not only would the virus be able to spread faster, but it would be objectively inhumane to allow infected birds to die from the virus without any intervention.
Roth expects that avian influenza cases will noticeably decrease as the weather warms, a constant trend officials have noticed since the virus reemerged in 2022.
Iowa has reported six cases of bird flu in 2025. An egg-laying facility in Buena Vista County was infected with the virus on March 17 and 400,000 birds were culled as a result.
On Monday, Rollins explained that a large piece of her five part strategy was to put “some significant funding into biosecurity, locking our barns down, USDA helping our poultry farmers across the country – but especially in states like Iowa, Ohio and Georgia that have been particularly hard-hit.”
Roth said that there has been some movement on biosecurity measures. Recently, the USDA began offering free biosecurity audits for farmers or producers that want their biosecurity measures evaluated. He also explained that the agency is offering to pay 75% of the cost of a major audit done on a facility by federal employees.
“It’s not clear to me if they have enough federal experts in biosecurity to do all the audits that need to be done or should be done,” he said. “The USDA has never been overstaffed, it has always been chronically understaffed, especially with avian influenza going on.”
Beyond biosecurity, Rollins said the agency was contributing $100 million to vaccine research in addition to other “therepeutic” treatments and culling methods.
“Just an all-in research approach with our friends in the private sector to figure out how this bird flu has gotten so out of control, why it’s jumping to our dairy cattle and how we need to basically roll it back,” she said.
Like with the other four ‘prongs’, Roth says the plan has potential but only time will tell if it proves to have any positive impact. His concern comes when talking about the proposed treatments.
”One of the things was new treatments, or therapeutics – drugs – to treat avian influenza and poultry, I can’t imagine how we would ever have a drug to do that,” Roth said. “There are drugs now that will do that, but if we use them in poultry, then the virus becomes resistant – they’re the same drugs we could use in people.”
Historically, U.S. officials have been weary of vaccinating poultry over fears that bird flu could go undetected in flocks unless they are tested, ultimately ending up in global trade supply.
“Realigning” government, agencies under Trump
Rollins framed sweeping actions taken by President Trump, including mass layoffs of federal employees – like those at the USDA – as an effort to “realign the government.”
“I think what we’re doing is about realigning the government. It’s about reduction in force, but it’s also about ensuring that we’ve got funds to actually focus on what’s really important – like protecting our livestock producers and our farm producers,” she said Monday.
But those forces being reduced are, in large part, those helping to contain bird flu and prevent it from getting out of control. In February, over 6,000 probationary employees were laid off from the USDA. Among them were 55 employees at the USDA’s National Centers for Animal Health in Ames.
Since then, a federal judge has ordered for all 6,000 employees to be rehired.
Recently, it was reported that the federal government has terminated their funding for over 100 programs at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
“FAO has received termination notices for over 100 programs funded by the United States, valued at approximately $382 million. These programs addressed critical issues such as animal disease control, famine prevention, economic stability and biosafety worldwide,” an FAO spokesperson told the New York Times last month.
Roth raised concern about the future of detecting and controlling foreign viruses – especially for animal health and agriculture – without proper resources from outlets like the FAO.
“On the animal health side, those activities that are very important for controlling the diseases we don’t have in animals at their source. If we don’t control them – help control them at their source – in other countries, it’s more likely that they’ll get here,” Roth said.
The FAO’s Global Health Security Program, which housed 60% of the programs affected by the funding cut, largely focused on “preparedness and rapid response to transboundary animal diseases.”
“Through this program, FAO has worked to strengthen global surveillance systems and enhance biosecurity capacity at country and regional levels,” an FAO spokesperson said. “This included efforts to mitigate the impact of zoonotic diseases such as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, New World Screwworm and African Swine Fever.”
Roth said that, while the government can save money by opting to not help other countries control animal-borne viruses, the problem is that the viruses don’t often stay put.
“The decision makers may think that it’s not our problem. Those countries need to control their own diseases, but it is our problem because those diseases move around,” Roth said. “If we don’t help them stop it in their country, it’s more likely to spread to other countries and eventually us. It’s in our own best interest, not just in the interest of those countries, to help them.
“I hope we don’t have to wait for bad things to happen for it to become obvious.”
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