Bird Flu Vaccination Update, March 11, 2025

Discussion around vaccinating poultry for bird flu in the US is moving quickly

Bird flu remains a hot topic, fueled by concerns over egg prices. While prices have begun to come down due to seasonality and industry adaptation, I still believe that poultry vaccination is the only long-term solution to prevent future egg price spikes—especially at politically sensitive moments. Vaccination would also fix many of the animal welfare issues around H5N1 and reduce the risk of a human pandemic. The conversation around vaccination is moving quickly, and it can be hard to keep up. Here are some of the most important developments with poultry vaccination over the last few weeks.

The current state of play

Given how much egg prices are in the news, addressing bird flu was on top of the priority list of new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. At the end of February, she unveiled her five point plan for fighting bird flu and lowering the price of eggs. One of the five points was “Explore Pathways toward Vaccines, Therapeutics, and Other Strategies for Protecting Egg Laying Chickens to Reduce Instances of Depopulation.” While her plan stopped short of approving vaccines for the egg, turkey, and dairy industries, it did allocate up to $100 million for vaccine research and included a commitment to addressing the trade-related challenges of a broader vaccination campaign.

More recently, Secretary Rollins retreated somewhat from vaccination, citing concerns over efficacy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services came out against vaccinating poultry against H5N1 on public health grounds.

USDA’s initial five point plan was applauded as a step in the right direction by industry groups, although they continue to advocate for full vaccine approval.

Trade wars

As I previously discussed, the biggest barrier to bird flu vaccination is international trade, specifically our ability to export chicken meat. The country that we export the most chicken meat to is Mexico (25%), followed by China (17%) and Canada (7%). These happen to be three countries that President Trump has recently announced tariffs on.

Indeed, chicken trade may be caught in the crosshairs as tensions between these countries rise. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs already include poultry meat (at the literal top of the list), as do China’s. Mexico hasn’t provided details on the products that will be subject to their retaliatory tariffs, but it might well include the $1B+ of poultry meat products that the US exports to Mexico each year.

It’s possible that if the trade wars escalate further and retaliatory tariffs reduce the flow of chicken meat from the US into Mexico, Canada, and China, then one barrier to bird flu vaccination could be removed. However, these escalations might also make it more difficult to undertake the negotiations necessary to protect US chicken meat exports if US egg producers are allowed to start vaccinating.

Given the volume of poultry products that flow from the US to Mexico, restricting US supply might be overly disruptive to the chicken meat market in Mexico. Imports from the US represent ~17% of the total chicken consumption in Mexico. If that supply were suddenly shut off, either because of a trade war or because of a Mexican response to a US H5N1 vaccination campaign, the price of chicken meat in Mexico could spike. Consider this in relation to the supply shock of eggs that’s occurred in the US, where we’ve seen a 9% decrease in egg supply lead to a 100% increase in egg prices. Chicken meat may have higher price elasticity than eggs because it can be substituted with other types of meat, but it’s reasonable to think that there would still be a significant increase in price for Mexican consumers.

In fact, US imports represent a significant fraction of the chicken meat market in many of the countries we export to. According to FAO data, 54% of US chicken exports go to countries where US chicken makes up more than 15% of domestic consumption. The possibility of price shocks in these countries makes it somewhat less likely that they would cut off American meat imports, whether because of bird flu vaccination or trade wars. However, in the quickly changing new international order, anything is possible, especially if countries are actively looking for opportunities to take more protectionist trade positions to bolster their domestic industries.

A new Dutch vaccine trial

In more positive news, the Netherlands recently announced that it would be trialing vaccination on a single commercial egg farm. This trial is notable because the Netherlands is the world’s largest exporter of eggs, and this is the first vaccine trial in a major exporting country. Other countries like Mexico that currently vaccinate for bird flu generally aren’t major exporters, reducing the importance of trade implications. The eggs produced on the farm in question will only supply eggs domestically, but this trial could serve as an important indication of how the international community will react to vaccination campaigns in major exporting countries.

Notably, the “trial” is not to test efficacy - that was already completed to satisfaction in field tests last year. Rather the trial is to gauge the reaction of trade partners, as well as to gain experience with administration and surveillance of the vaccination program.

The vaccine in question, Innovax-ND-H5, works differently than the Zoetis vaccine that was given conditional approval in the US last month. It is a live recombinant vector vaccine that protects against H5 avian influenza viruses, and also Newcastle Disease and Marek’s, which egg producers already commonly vaccinate for. Unlike Zoetis’ killed-virus vaccine, the Innovax vaccine only has to be administered once, either in-ovo or on the first day of hatch.¹

The ease of administration and the protection against other common diseases means that the Innovax vaccine has some clear practical advantages over the Zoetis vaccine. In recent congressional testimony, a representative from the egg industry emphasized the importance of these logistical considerations, since injecting each bird multiple times could be challenging across the entire US egg sector.

Such a trial could also be a sensible first step in a potential US vaccination program. In the same congressional testimony, the egg industry representative pointed out that there is a single egg farm in Hawai’i that could well suited for a trial given its geographic isolation from the rest of the US. A field trial on this farm could help test the efficacy of a vaccine in commercial farms without risking US trade relationships if eggs are only sold within the state.

All in all, a mass vaccination campaign in the US still may be a ways out, but this Dutch trial, as well as shifting trade realities could lower the barriers. I’ll continue to provide updates here as things develop.

1. I’m not sure whether Dutch egg producers will elect to administer the vaccine in-ovo or one the first day post-hatch. But interestingly, the Netherlands is a country where in-ovo sexing is already widespread. This makes in-ovo vaccination a possibility where it wasn’t before, as the presence of male eggs means half of the vaccines would be wasted. In other contexts, in-ovo vaccination has shown increased efficacy since it gives the embryo’s immune system more time to respond.