For Brian Kreher, a fourth-generation farmer in the small town of Clarence, New York, the latest outbreak of bird flu has meant many sleepless nights.
He considers his 18-acre farm one of the lucky ones. With extensive safety precautions, he hasn’t lost any birds to the virus, which has ravaged poultry farms across the US.
But the outbreak forced him to make tough calls, like deciding whether to accept a new batch of baby chicks from a hatchery near a virus hotspot in Pennsylvania. If he didn’t, he would have no chickens to replace those that die or get sick.
“I had no choice,” Kreher told the BBC. “It was either accept those baby chicks, or over the next year, we slowly exit farming.”
“Egg farmers are in the fight of our lives and we are losing,” he said.
Though the avian flu, or H5N1, has circulated among American poultry flocks for years, an outbreak starting in 2022 has wreaked havoc on farms, killing over 156 million birds and sending egg prices skyrocketing. The virus then got a foothold among dairy cows last year, and this month, a different strain – tied to severe infections in humans – was found in the cattle.
The worsening outbreak comes as President Donald Trump’s new administration makes sweeping cuts to government staffing and research funding that public health experts say threatens the country’s ability to respond to bird flu and other potential pandemics.
This week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) told the BBC it fired several officials who were working on the response to bird flu before trying to hire them back days later. The administration also promised billions in funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which scientists say could hamper research that helps them understand the evolution of viruses.
“Right now, the risk to most Americans remains low, but the virus is continuing to surprise us, and so that could change, and could change quickly,” said Michaela Simoneau, a global health security fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“I worry, as all of these funding cuts are in the political conversation, that we don’t cut those programs that have been shown to be most essential.”
Trump officials said they are working on a new plan to respond to bird flu, one that includes more safety precautions and vaccines while moving away from culling – a process where farmers kill all their birds after one flock becomes infected to prevent the spread of the highly contagious and fatal disease.
When asked for details about the new strategy, the White House did not provide specifics to the BBC, but said Joe Biden’s administration had “crushed American agriculture with regulatory uncertainty”, inflation and “radical environmental policies”.
Red flags as a virus mutates
Scientists have seen a number of warning signs in recent months that the avian flu is adapting to infect humans, said Andrew Pekosz, a molecular biology professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Influenza viruses don’t typically grow well in mammals, so the length of time the virus has circulated in dairy cows is concerning because it allows more opportunities to evolve, Mr Pekosz said.
Bird flu infected cattle for the first time ever in the US at the beginning of last year. Since then, there have been nearly 1,000 confirmed cases across 17 states. There also have been 68 confirmed cases among humans, most of whom worked closely with animals.
Then, in February, a new variant of the virus – called D1.1 – was detected in dairy cows and an infected worker in Nevada for the first time. The strain also caused two severe infections in humans in North America, a teenager in hospital in British Columbia and a patient in Louisiana who died from the virus.
The new variant also means there are now at least two instances in which cows have caught the virus from wild birds, and not other dairy herds.
“We’re seeing these little red flags, real signs that the virus is making some inroads,” Mr Pekosz said.
The virus has upended poultry and dairy farms where workers have had to kill millions of birds to prevent more infections. It’s a battle US consumers have felt at the grocery store and a recurring theme during the presidential campaign – in January, the average cost of eggs in the US rose more than 15% from a year ago, to $4.95 a dozen.
Mr Kreher said that despite a host of security measures, including washing vehicles on farms, wearing steel-toed boots and using lasers to deter wild birds, the outbreak continues to worsen across the country.
Bird flu “is on our minds from the moment we get up to the moment we sleep, if sleep comes”, he said. “We need new strategies to fight this virus.”
A new Trump strategy for farmers in crisis
California poultry farmer Christian Alexandre has seen firsthand the financial and emotional devastation of a bird flu outbreak. In 2022, he had to kill all 45,000 of his chickens when the virus spread at his family farm near the Oregon border.
“It was extremely painful,” said Mr Alexandre, president of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association.
In response to soaring egg prices, Trump officials now say they want to move away from the slaughtering, focusing instead on preventative measures.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News last week that he is working on a plan with newly confirmed USDA leader Brooke Rollins to combat the virus “with biosecurity and medication”.
“Rollins and I have been working with all the best people in government, including academics around the country and around the world, to have a plan ready for the president next week,” Hassett said.
Mr Alexandre said he was not sure that vaccinations and other precautions could replace the need to cull flocks – but he said new ideas were desperately needed.
“What farmers and the USDA have been doing has just obviously not worked,” he said. “We’re in a crisis.”
Vaccines for birds against the avian flu already exist in countries around the world, and last week, the USDA granted conditional approval to a new shot developed by Zoetis.
Still, many poultry industry groups oppose vaccinating birds against the virus. This is because most countries don’t accept exports of poultry that are vaccinated because of fears that it masks the presence of the virus, said Tom Super of the National Chicken Council.
Public health experts have been critical of the US government’s response to bird flu since the virus first spread to dairy cows, arguing Biden officials fell short in their disease surveillance efforts.
But Trump’s team has slowed communications about the disease, which also concerns public health experts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reportedly withheld weekly reports on bird flu and canceled weeks of briefings with lawmakers and state health officials.
“I haven’t seen anything from this administration that would say that they’re taking this outbreak any more seriously,” Mr Pekosz said.
Ms Simoneau sees one encouraging sign from the Trump administration: Gerald Parker, a bird flu expert, veterinarian and former top-ranking health official, was chosen to lead the White House’s Pandemic Office.
At the same time, she said, the wide cuts and the decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization under Trump’s leadership could hamper efforts to respond to H5N1.
“We’re cutting ourselves off from that global information system at a time when we really need all of those signals that we can get,” she said.
Ms Simoneau said fatigue and a decrease in trust in public health officials following the Covid pandemic makes for a difficult environment for any administration to respond to a potential health crisis. But, she said, the threat is one Trump officials should take seriously.
“We don’t know if this could be an emergency for humans next week, or if it could be several months from now, or if it might not happen at all,” Ms Simoneau said. “But taking your eye off the ball isn’t really an option.”
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