Farms across California have had to euthanize several million chickens and ducks in recent weeks, as a wave of avian influenza threatens to upend national poultry and egg supplies.
While cases of the disease have been cropping up throughout the U.S., agricultural hubs in Northern California have endured the greatest losses over the past month.
“There’s economy of scale in commercial agriculture, including poultry,” Maurice Pitesky, an avian disease specialist at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) School of Veterinary Medicine, told The Hill.
“No pun intended — if you put your eggs all in one basket, the virus gets into a facility and then all the birds have to be euthanized, unfortunately,” Pitesky said.
As of midday Friday, about 10.62 million birds in 63 flocks nationwide had been affected by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks over the past 30 days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
Of these flocks, 37 were commercial and 26 were backyard, and a total of 3.8 million birds were concentrated in California.
The current spike in HPAI — on the rise since mid-fall — is the latest escalation in a nationwide outbreak that has ebbed and flowed since 2022.
A previous surge in the disease rattled the nation’s poultry industry last year, leading to national egg shortages and record-high price tags. The country could be headed in that direction again: While egg prices are still half of what they were about a year ago, they have risen 12 percent over last month, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Cal-Maine Foods, the country’s biggest egg producer, cited a 91 percent loss in profits in its fiscal 2024 second quarter earnings — generating $17 million in quarterly net income, as opposed to $198.6 million during the same period last year.
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