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<p>Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.</p>
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
There has been a steep drop-off in detections of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) across the country compared to last year's peaks, but USDA officials and poultry industry groups have no plans to relax precautions.
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is approving the emergency use of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) vaccine to prevent further deaths of the critically endangered California condor.
Jenny Lester Moffitt, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, told lawmakers Tuesday that the agency is taking an eradication-based approach to highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The prospect of vaccinating against the spread of highly-pathogenic avian influenza has divided the nation's poultry industry groups as the Biden administration moves forward with plans to conduct vaccination trials this month.
The American poultry sector is awaiting a spring spike in detections of highly pathogenic avian influenza, leading industry and government officials to wonder if the disease has pivoted from an occasional concern to a permanent part of raising birds in the United States.
Supermarket prices rose another 0.3% last month, driven in part by jumps in the cost of beef and pork, but food inflation continues to ease from the spikes shoppers saw in 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Industry analysts say consumers should not expect egg prices to return to lower levels due to the sustained impact of the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak, which is proving worse than the one experienced in 2014-15.
Analysts say consumers are likely to see relatively high prices in grocery stores and restaurants for some time, due to strong commodity markets and high agricultural input costs that get passed through the food chain.
The outbreak of avian flu that drove poultry and egg prices sky high this year has carried into the fall as the virus continues to spread through wild birds, a sharp contrast to what happened during the last major attack seven years ago.
The ink was barely dry on a deal to allow shipments of grain stuck in Ukrainian ports when Russia unleashed a missile attack that has jeopardized the agreement.
