WAFFLE HOUSE is typically a port in a storm. The breakfast restaurants are so unshakeable that the federal emergency-response agency uses their closure as an indicator of a severe natural disaster. Yet on February 3rd Waffle House wobbled—it announced a 50-cent surcharge per egg, citing rising costs due to avian flu. The shell-shock is widespread: the average cost of a dozen eggs is now over $7 (see chart), a 140% increase from a year ago. Even so, supermarkets are selling out.
The outbreak of avian flu, which began in turkeys in February 2022, has already led to the death of 150m birds, including 41m in December and January alone. The disease is now rife in dairy cows and has infected at least 67 people, mostly dairy workers. In January the first person died. Even so, with no reported human-to-human spread, experts say the disease does not currently pose much threat to people.
But it does pose an economic and political risk. The Department of Agriculture (usda) has already spent over $2bn trying to contain the outbreak. The costs to consumers are likely to be much higher. And the price of eggs has a particular political salience. In September J.D. Vance, then candidate for vice-president, highlighted its rise, saying that eggs were more expensive “thanks to Kamala Harris’s inflationary policies”. There is some truth to the accusation of federal bungling: the former administration’s response to avian flu was halting. Although the Trump administration cannot undo its mistakes, it can avoid repeating them.
Many countries vaccinate birds against avian flu: Mexico did and has largely avoided the current outbreak. But even though America has an appropriate vaccine available, it hasn’t been used, probably because of the cost and the risk to chicken exports. Many trade agreements block the import of vaccinated birds, because they can carry the infection without showing symptoms. The disease response is “always walking this line between keeping a healthy agricultural sector and then making choices about importers and exporters”, explains Thomas Marsh, an economist at Washington State University. Meanwhile, a high egg price boosts the profits of farmers with healthy chickens, while others get compensated for chickens they have to cull.
Unlike chickens, cows generally recover from avian flu. But a cattle outbreak is more dangerous for human health as it raises the chances of the virus mutating so it can jump from human to human. Testing is essential for tracking the spread and evolution of the disease. Vets began reporting that cows in Texas were getting sick in December 2023 and a bovine outbreak was officially declared in March 2024. Localised testing could have begun then, says Fred Gingrich, a vet with the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, but “nobody wanted to volunteer, and nobody was sure who had the authority to do it”. The USDA didn’t require lactating cows travelling across state lines to be tested until the end of April. By that point the outbreak had reached seven other states. A national framework for testing milk tanks only started two months ago. “It’s just very frustrating—mentally and emotionally,” Dr Gingrich says.
Donald Trump’s administration takes over management of the outbreak at a pivotal moment: not only have egg prices spiked but a new variant of avian flu has been found in herds in Nevada. Gerald Parker has reportedly been tapped to lead the White House office that responds to (human and animal) pandemics. Dr Parker, a vet who has served both Democratic and Republican administrations, would be a strong choice, showing that the administration is taking the threat seriously. In her congressional hearing Brooke Rollins, Mr Trump’s nominee to be secretary of agriculture, said avian flu would be “one of the very top priorities”.
So far, on policy related to agriculture itself Mr Trump has overseen continuity. “We wouldn’t expect that there would be large changes between administrations,” says Jamie Jonker, the chief science officer at the National Milk Producers Federation. But for epidemiology there has been disruption that threatens to make things worse. Mr Trump suspended communications between agencies and organisations outside government when he entered office. Although some co-operation has resumed, scientific meetings have been cancelled and an expected study on unknowingly infected vets has not been released. “It’s a stunning development,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Centre at Brown University. “Now is the time where we need more data faster, not data later.”
Not much can be done about current egg prices and the usda expects them to rise even further. An avian-flu outbreak is a time-consuming problem for a farmer. Hens must be killed, the barn sanitised, the sanitisation signed off by federal and state officials and new chickens brought in and matured. In all, the process takes at least half a year. But other elements of the outbreak can be managed, particularly to reduce the risk to human and bovine health. “If I had my rainbows and unicorns, every [dairy] processor or every farm would be sampled once a month” to see if it has had an outbreak, says Keith Poulsen, an infectious-disease vet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The new administration may be more effective than the old one in persuading government-sceptical farmers to participate in testing programmes. One thing will undoubtedly become more challenging, however: tracking human cases. Many farm workers are undocumented immigrants and are likely to avoid testing, especially since the Trump administration announced that it would allow immigration enforcement at hospitals. ■
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