Wholesale egg prices have dropped by more than 40% since late February, a decline that should soon translate into broader savings for consumers at grocery stores. This welcome respite has largely resulted from the lull in significant bird flu outbreaks in recent weeks, perhaps due to seasonal patterns in the virus’s transmission. North American flyways typically remain quiet in February as migratory birds have yet to start their journeys from their winter habitats.
But this reprieve may be short-lived: With spring approaching, wild birds are resuming their seasonal migrations, potentially triggering renewed outbreaks of the deadly virus. Such developments could once again strain domestic poultry populations, bringing renewed focus on the measures being undertaken by U.S. authorities to curb the spread of infection.
Since the virus first appeared in North America in 2022, approximately 166 million egg-laying hens have been culled from infected farms. Once the virus infiltrates a flock, it spreads with alarming speed and proves nearly always fatal to the infected hens. Consequently, culling becomes an unfortunate necessity to spare the birds from a near-certain and agonizing death and minimize the virus’s transmission risk to neighboring farms.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed allowing the virus to spread freely through flocks, hoping to pinpoint hens that display natural immunity. Yet this approach is impractical: Hens bred specifically for maximum egg production tend to have inherently fragile immune systems. Worse, permitting unchecked transmission could inadvertently incubate viral mutations, potentially transforming the outbreak into an even more dangerous threat. Most of these farms have hundreds of thousands or millions of chickens, so even when poultry farmers try to isolate one part of an infected flock, the disease will inevitably spread across their entire flock. The virus can spread through contaminated equipment moved between farms, via wild birds, or, in some instances, possibly through airborne dander traveling short distances and contaminating nearby water sources.
The most effective strategy is prevention — ensuring flocks never become infected in the first place and fortifying them against potential exposure. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins recently unveiled a five-part strategy designed to curb avian flu transmission among domestic, egg-laying hens. Her comprehensive plan calls for heightened biosecurity measures to protect farms against initial infection and internal spread. It also explores vaccine options for hens, among other measures. Before wild birds resume migrating, the U.S. has time to take additional steps to fortify farm defenses against such threats and boost the supply of eggs available to consumers.
A sensible first step is to seriously consider strategies for vaccinating egg-laying hens, an approach that agricultural officials have viewed with some skepticism. 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.
Admittedly, this strategy faces technical challenges. Chickens can receive bird flu vaccinations at around 14 to 21 days of age. Since many hens already receive injections of other vaccines when they are chicks or young pullets, some experts propose integrating an avian influenza vaccine into this existing regimen. However, egg-laying hens would likely require two vaccinations over their commercial life span, complicating the logistics. To make vaccination practical, scientists may need to develop ways to aerosolize the vaccine, enabling more efficient delivery. With roughly 378 million egg-laying hens in the U.S. and nearly 10 billion broiler chickens raised annually for meat, individually injecting millions of adult birds could become complex and costly, requiring new strategies for delivery.
Yet, technological difficulties aren’t the only obstacles; political considerations also loom large. Trade issues present a significant hurdle. Europeans may object to importing live chicks from the U.S. because the available vaccines are viewed as non-sterilizing — that is, while vaccination reduces virus transmission and makes hens a lot less susceptible, poultry can still contract and potentially spread the virus. So, vaccination can complicate the identification of infected birds, raising concerns that stricken poultry could remain undetected within flocks destined for export. Many European countries worry about importing the virus unwittingly among vaccinated hens.
However, these concerns about vaccination can be addressed with stepped-up biosecurity to reduce the chances that the virus will get into birds destined for export. Other nations — including France, China, and Mexico — already vaccinate poultry against H5N1. Some, such as France, are cleared by other nations to export these birds because France has proven that it can reduce the odds of subclinical infections from infiltrating their flocks. Therapeutic measures alone are not a panacea; their effectiveness hinges upon the concurrent application of enhanced biosecurity practices, many of which Rollins has strongly advocated, such as better efforts to sanitize equipment shared across farms, or protect water supplies used by hens.
If these efforts fail to prevent any renewed outbreak of the virus, or if officials can’t be convinced to undertake a vaccination campaign, there are additional steps that U.S. regulators can adopt to boost egg supply. The price of eggs at the consumer level is highly sensitive to marginal changes in supply — much like oil prices in economic terms, where the cost is often determined by the last incremental barrels available on the market. Similarly, when it comes to eggs, even modest increases in production can significantly lower consumer prices.
Breeders produce a subset of eggs originally intended for hatching into new hens. If these fertilized eggs fail to hatch, they can still safely enter the food supply under carefully controlled conditions. Some of these eggs can be designated as table eggs, which others may serve as “breaker eggs” that are cracked open, pasteurized, and incorporated into liquid egg products — such as Egg Beaters — sold in cartons. During previous outbreaks of avian influenza, when egg supplies became constrained, some members of the egg industry advocated for using breeder eggs to ease shortages. However, longstanding Food and Drug Administration regulations have generally limited use of these eggs for human consumption. The FDA’s primary concern is that breeder eggs, having been held at warmer temperatures to promote hatching rather than promptly refrigerated after laying, carry an elevated risk of contamination by pathogens such as salmonella, thus posing potential health risks to consumers.
But the risk can be reduced. If the breeder eggs are earmarked for consumption as breaker eggs, they would still undergo pasteurization. If egg producers were able to also refrigerate these eggs more rapidly — bringing them to a temperature of 45 degrees within 36 hours — they might achieve a sufficient cumulative reduction in the risk of bacterial contamination, enough to open a pathway for their safe consumption. If small increases in the supply of eggs can translate into meaningfully lower prices for consumers, this might be one path to creating a more sustainable marginal capacity for more eggs available on store shelves.
Demand for eggs will likely remain strong, particularly with the Easter holiday drawing near. And our current respite from avian flu outbreaks may prove short-lived. 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.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019. He is a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and serves on the boards of directors of Pfizer Inc. and Illumina.