OAN Staff James Meyers
1:43 PM – Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Bird flu outbreaks have forced tens of millions of chickens to be culled across nine states during 2025, according to a damning report.
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The Department of Agriculture (DOA) has confirmed an eye-popping 41 outbreaks so far this year that struck down entire egg-laying flocks in Arizona, California, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Ohio reported another setback this week, its first since March, according to the April Egg Markets Overview from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.
The culling of chickens caused a national egg shortage that caused increased prices at the beginning of this year, with prices increasing to over $8 in the month of February.
Meanwhile, costs for eggs have decreased, the average wholesale price of eggs is $3.13, according to the USDA.
“You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low,” President Donald Trump said last week.
Since January, a total of 30.6 million chickens have been affected by the bird flu, the USDA stated. Of these, 19.6 million were in caged systems while the other 11 million roamed free.
When states began to feel the hit, leaders began to call on the Trump administration to ramp up its response, which included the Governor of Ohio Mike DeWine (R-Ohio).
“One of the things that is clear is that the federal government is really going to have to accelerate the research that is being done in regard to bird flu,” DeWine said last month.
In March, the USDA proposed a $1 billion plan to solve the bird flu problem that should begin this summer. The plan includes $400 million set aside to support impacted farmers in cleaning and repopulating their farms, which can take up to almost six months.
Recently, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated that farmers should avoid immunizing their flocks to avoid turning them “into mutation factories.”
Since April 2024, 70 human cases of bird flu have been reported, according to an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March. Furthermore, no cases so far have been caused by human-to-human transmission.
“The current risk of bird flu for the general public is low. However, people with close and prolonged, unprotected contact with infected birds and other animals are at greater risk of infection,” the Ohio Department of Health said.
According to the CDC, since the beginning of 2022, close to 168 billion poultry birds have been affected by avian influenza.
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