'We're fighting an epic battle':Avian flu has culled 58 MILLION farm-raised birds, sending cost of eggs skyrocketing

'We're fighting an epic battle': Avian flu has culled 58 MILLION farm-raised birds, sending cost of eggs skyrocketing and leaving farmers scrubbing down feed trucks, sanitizing their shoes and installing 'sound cannons' to shoo wild birds
One of the largest egg producers in the country has described the current bird flu outbreak as an 'epic battle'.

For the US poultry industry, that battle has been the deadliest in history, killing 58million birds since February last year and affecting egg-laying hens, chickens and turkeys.

Unlike normal spikes in bird flu that last months, this outbreak sustained itself through summer and is spread almost entirely by wild birds.
The outbreak has ramped up pressure on the industry to protect its flocks and forced them to kill millions of birds to avoid the deadly spread.

Versova Management Co., one of the country's five largest egg producers, learned lessons from a previous outbreak in 2015 but remains anxious. 'We're fighting an epic battle,' its president J.T. Dean told the Wall Street Journal. 'We have to be perfect.'
Dean said the company has been forced to change its practices, including by installing vibrating mechanisms in containers holding chicken feed to avoid worker contamination.

The disease is so contagious that wind can carry contaminated bird droppings to a barn vent, causing the virus to circulate inside.

It can also be spread to commercial flocks by workers who can bring the disease into the barn via wild-bird feces on their shoes.

Some farms have installed motion-detecting alarms, known as 'sound cannons', as well as bright laser systems to shoo away wild birds without harming them.

Of the 58million birds that have been wiped out, nearly 75 percent have been egg-laying hens. They are more susceptible to bird flu because, unlike chickens that go for slaughter within months, they are kept producing eggs for as long as a year.

Versova, based in Iowa, said it has about 17million egg-laying hens, making it one of the world's largest egg processing companies. States including Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Colorado have suffered the most severe contamination of flocks, according to the CDC.

The last time the industry was rocked so severely by bird flu was in 2014-2015. Although that outbreak killed more than 50million birds, it was much shorter and over by June.

What makes this outbreak different is that wild birds are responsible for around 84 percent of all cases, according to the USDA, whereas during the last outbreak it was spread farm to farm.
a resurgence.

The beginning of the outbreak early last year also coincided with rising energy and labor costs, causing the cost of eggs to surge to an all-time high.

Last month it surpassed the cost of a pound of beef, and while this month it dropped to $2.22, it remains higher than usual. In January, a dozen large grade A eggs cost an average of $4.82.

Higher cost of feed and transportation caused egg prices to rise further. Although the hike squeezed consumers, some suppliers have recorded large profits as their margins mean they make more out of each egg.

Cal-Maine, the largest producer and distributor of fresh shell eggs in the US, had a record quarterly income of $199million in the final quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2021 it just about broke even, netting $1million.

In some places, it's been hard to find eggs on the shelves, but supplies overall are holding up because the total flock is only down about 5 percent from from its normal size of around 320million hens.

Farmers have been working to replace their flocks as soon as they can after an outbreak.
Purdue University agricultural economist Jayson Lusk said he believes the bird flu outbreak is the biggest driver of the price increases. Unlike past years, the virus lingered throughout the summer and made a resurgence last fall, infecting egg and poultry farms.

'Bird flu is not the only factor, but in my view it's the main driver of what we're experiencing at the moment,' Lusk told the Associated Press.

But the president and CEO of the American Egg Board trade group, Emily Metz, said she believes all the cost increases farmers have faced in the past year were a bigger factor in the price increases than bird flu.

'When you're looking at fuel costs go up, and you're looking at feed costs go up as much as 60 percent, labor costs, packaging costs, all of that... those are much much bigger factors than bird flu for sure,' Metz said.
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