Bird flu forced 30M chickens to be culled across nine states so far this year
So far, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed a staggering 41 outbreaks this year that struck down entire egg-laying flocks in Arizona, California, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
4 This year, 30 million chickens have been culled across nine states as a result of bird flu outbreaks.
Kevin C Downs forThe New York Post
Ohio, where a majority of this year's spread was isolated, tacked on another flareup this week — its first since early March, according to the April Egg Markets Overview from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.
The seemingly endless culling sparked a national egg shortage that inflated prices over the first few months of 2025, with prices across some states peaking around a whopping $8 in February.
While costs have since fallen, the average wholesale price of eggs still sits at $3.13, according to the USDA.
4 The outbreak caused a nationwide egg shortage and soaring prices.
REUTERS
In total, 30.6 million chickens have been affected since January, according to the USDA. Of these, 19.6 million were in caged systems while the other 11 million roamed free.
As impacted states begin to feel the pressure, leaders began to call on the Trump administration to ramp up its response — including the Republican governor of 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,' Gov. Mike DeWine said last month.
Last month, the USDA proposed a $1 billion master plan to tackle bird flu that should be set into motion this summer. In it, $400 million is set aside to support impacted farmers in cleaning and repopulating their farms, which can take up to six months.
4 Ohio reported its first outbreak since early March this week.
AFP via Getty Images
At least, that was the plan before the Department of Health and Human Services layoffs, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resulted in the dismissal of people tasked with responding to bird flu.
The notoriously anti-vaccine Kennedy scion asserted 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 CDC in March. No cases so far have been caused by human-to-human transmission.
4 More than 168 billion poultry birds have been affected by bird flu since 2022.
AP
'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.
Since the beginning of 2022, around 168 billion poultry birds have been affected by avian influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
44 minutes ago
- USA Today
White House backs away from IVF mandate despite Trump's campaign pledge, Washington Post
WASHINGTON − The White House has no current plans to mandate insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization, despite President Donald Trump's campaign promise to expand access to fertility treatments, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year directing the government to expand access to IVF and reduce the costs of the popular fertility treatment. More: Some workers are job hopping for fertility benefits. Employers are trying to keep up. White House officials say expanding IVF access remains a priority, but legal constraints prevent mandating coverage without Congressional approval, and no bill is currently planned, the Post reported. Officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment by USA TODAY. Contributing: Francesca Chambers
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
‘Great news but a weird twist.' After the NIH moved to restore hundreds of grants, researchers remain in limbo.
Advertisement In New England, 63 of those grants, worth $126 million, are set to be restored, according to a Globe analysis based on the The grants were restored as the result of a lawsuit filed by the American Public Health Association and 16 state attorneys general arguing that the NIH improperly ended funding tied to topics like gender identity, health disparities, vaccine hesitancy, and DEI efforts. The judge in the case ruled in June that the terminations were 'illegal and void' and ordered the government to immediately make the funds available. The Trump administration has appealed the decision. Advertisement The grants are a fraction of the more than $3.1 billion in funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services that the Trump administration has canceled across New England. At a status hearing on the case Monday, attorneys representing the public health association said that more than 50 of its roughly 300 affected research grants across the country have not been reinstated, and that the NIH has not provided a timeline for when all grants will be restored. Researchers face other obstacles as well. At Harvard, virtually all federal funding remains frozen as part of the administration's broader assault on the university. Others face reduced staffing, due to layoffs, and shortened deadlines to complete their research. And funding at the federal level remains subject to sudden reversals, as shown Tuesday night when the White House In a statement Thursday, the NIH told the Globe it 'has been working to reinstate grants to comply with the court's order.' Scott Delaney, a Harvard scientist and co-creator of Grant Watch, said many researchers remain wary despite the win because of further appeals and reviews. 'Every indication is that NIH will continue to cut research on trans health and on DEI. They still remain hostile to broad bodies of research, and they continue to ask researchers to rewrite their grants to avoid certain topics,' said Delaney, who lost his own NIH funding and received a But many are pressing ahead despite the obstacles and hoping for the best. Advertisement Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, learned this month that her funding would be restored. She said that despite feeling vindicated by US District Court Judge William G. Young's ruling, she cannot access the funds due to the federal freeze on funds to Harvard. Since 2019, Krieger and her team have been working to measure the impact of six types of discrimination — including racism, sexism, and ageism — on health. The researchers enrolled 699 patients who completed two study questionnaires online and at three Boston community health centers — including Fenway Health, Mattapan Community Health Center, and Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in Dorchester — to test how discrimination contributes to psychological distress and sleep disorders. 'We can resume the work because we had completed all data collection and we were in the phase of data analysis and manuscript preparation,' Krieger said. 'Whether or not the funding ever truly gets reinstated for my grant — and I would like that it is — it's important, given the complexities, to make sure these things go from a court order to reality.' At Tufts, the school lost and then suddenly regained a pipeline for young talent, though several young scientists lost out in the process. The university hosts one of just 22 NIH-sponsored programs in the country that trains a diverse group of postdoctoral scholars in both research and teaching. The program, called the Institutional Research Career and Academic Development Award, or IRACDA, focuses on underrepresented groups. 'We were ramping up for another five years after earning highly competitive funding last fall,' said Mitch McVey, program director and professor of biology at Tufts. 'Then the new administration came in, and everything changed.' Advertisement When the NIH terminated funding, four incoming applicants had their offers rescinded just one day after receiving them. Marissa Maroni, 28, celebrated the news with her husband and prepared to move back to her home state. 'It felt like the right next step, personally and professionally,' said Maroni, who is finishing her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. 'But just a day later, I got an email saying the program was canceled. It was incredibly disheartening.' The loss also affects Bunker Hill Community College, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Suffolk University, where IRACDA scholars like Maroni were slated to teach next year. McVey said Tufts might extend the offers again to the four applicants but, 'We're trying to balance the risk involved here, which would be that if the government wins the appeal, the funding will likely be terminated again. We don't want to put the scholars in a position where their job security is always in jeopardy, so we're trying to figure out how to best navigate this situation. It's not easy.' At Yale, nine NIH grants that were terminated are in the process of reinstatement. Four of those belong to John Pachankis, a Yale School of Public Health professor who has spent the past 20 years investigating why people in the LGBTQ+ community are at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide. The sudden March terminations not only disrupted years of research but also halted the rollout of promising mental health interventions. One of Pachankis's halted trials aimed to train front-line mental health providers working at 90 LGBTQ+ community centers across 35 states in cognitive-behavioral therapy to treat depression, anxiety, and substance use. Advertisement 'Right before the funding termination, we learned that our trained mental health providers had started delivering our cognitive-behavioral therapy to over 4,000 LGBT people in just four months,' he said. The funding cut prevented them from studying the longer-term impact of the therapy and ways to sustain it in local communities. Restarting the work has been slow and resource-intensive, he said. It requires updating ethics approvals, reconvening data safety review boards, updating clinical trials registries, drafting now-overdue progress reports, and restarting trials enrollment while no longer having sufficient staff to do this work. 'The research infrastructure took years to build, was collapsed in a day, and will take months if not longer to rebuild,' Pachankis said. 'My confidence in future federal funding for this research remains shaken, but my team's commitment to asking and answering important scientific questions isn't going away.' Meanwhile, at Brown, Moitra is figuring out how to move forward with his research. Between 2022 and early 2024, he and his team recruited 240 LGBTQ+ participants, offering two counseling sessions to study the mental health impacts from the pandemic. After funding was pulled, Moitra said, they lost 40 participants' worth of data that had timed out after those participants received just one counseling session. Now that the grant has been reinstated, Moitra's team is left racing against the clock as the deadline for the funding to be used remains Aug. 31. The researchers are applying for a no-cost extension to allow them to complete the work without requesting additional funds. 'After five-plus months of uncertainty, we were moving on,' Moitra said. 'It's hard to scramble it all back together.' Advertisement Sarah Rahal can be reached at
The Hill
4 hours ago
- The Hill
Experts, school leaders excited about Presidential Fitness Test but urge reforms
Health experts and school leaders are thrilled with President Trump's revival of the Presidential Fitness Test, but they are hoping for substantial revisions to program, which was first deployed nearly 60 years ago. Advocates say the test, which hasn't been used since 2012, will need a makeover to shift its focus away from competition and more toward sustaining healthy lifestyles for youth. The move comes amid Trump's increased interest in the sports world during his second term and is propelled by the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement led by the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump appointed professional athletes to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, which will be guiding and working on standards for the revived test. Experts are urging the council to ensure the goals of the test are updated as well. Kayce Solari Williams, past president of the American School Health Association and a professor at Purdue University, hopes the council will go from the old standard to really considering 'overall health and performance' and linking expectations to certain age groups. Williams stressed she has to see 'what the format' and 'requirements' will be as we 'know more about taking better care of the body and doing some prevention, along with strengthening and increasing endurance and flexibility' than we did in the past. The prior test had five core activities: a 1-mile run; pullups or pushups; situps; a shuttle run; and the sit-and-reach. It was originally created to compare with Europeans students in physical strength, and the top 15 percent of U.S. students who completed the test would get a presidential award. The physical exam was ended during the Obama administration over concerns it focused more on competition than healthy lifestyles. 'The good news is that we are going to be looking, I hope, at curriculum to enhance how much activity is happening at schools. As for the testing itself, I mean, it's just a number … I'm hoping that a team or expert is really going to look at: How do we help improve baseline data?' said Laura Richardson, a kinesiology professor at the University of Michigan. 'My hope is that the Presidential Fitness testing is going to evolve, maybe rewards to them, where it's going to incentivize students individually and not based on groups,' Richardson added. The test was previously taken by middle and high schoolers across the country, but only 10 to 17-year-olds were eligible for the presidential award. School leaders are ecstatic over the change, pointing to concerns about sedentary lifestyles among their students. Tori Snitker, principal of Rolla Junior High School in Missouri, said her district has worked to create more room for physical activity for all students, including those with disabilities. 'I am seeing students have a more sedentary lifestyle due to technology,' Snitker said. 'We have to focus on the physical health of our students.' Other principals are so concerned about this phenomenon they suggested school fitness standards tied to a national goal or even military service. 'I'm hoping for some standards that are maybe even aligned with what military service is required because I think as a country, we need to be able to be prepared, and our young people need to be able to have a standard of fitness,' said Pierre Orbe, principal of DeWitt Clinton High School in New York, adding there is a difference between students who are medically unable to do certain tasks versus those who are 'not fulfilling their current potential.' Orbe believes some national standard is needed because physical education teachers feel 'hamstrung' by an 'enabling society' where there are more notes 'to say that my child can't do things' than can. Concerns about reliance on technology among students have mounted as many states and districts have started to ban cell phones in schools. Steven Kelder, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, Houston, and co-director of Coordinated Approach to Child Health, stressed that just one test will not help the situation, unlike a 'combination of programs' that focus on physical fitness for a variety of individuals, not just those good at particular sports. According to 2024 data from the Centers for Control and Disease Prevention (CDC), one in five U.S. children are affected by obesity. 'There is an obesity crisis in America. It's not getting a whole lot better, and now, over time last 25 years, it's resulting in a diabetes crisis amongst kids. And I think that partly was the result of video games and what I call indoor electronic entertainment,' Kelder said. Schools and states also worry about students' mental health with the increased use of technology, though the Trump administration recently cut $1 billion to mental health programs for schools due to concerns the money was going to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Leaders also stress the need for federal resources, especially if the presidential council creates awards and inventive structures for students in the revived test. 'We would love to see some resources to come our way to help with the motivation, with the rewards,' said Dennis Willingham, superintendent at the Walker County Board of Education in Alabama. 'We do have creative people who work with our children.' 'We're thankful for that, and we know that they provide rewards and motivation on their own, but to have resources to come from the national level and to make this a big deal for everyone nationwide, it makes it even bigger and even more appealing to our children,' he added.
