Innovations in Animal Agriculture (April 2025)
Some updates from my think tank, Innovate Animal Ag
As many of you know, my day job is CEO of Innovate Animal Ag which supports the adoption of transformative technologies within animal agriculture. A lot has happened in our world since the start of the year, so I thought I'd collect some of the big news. If you’re interested in more of these updates, sign up for the IAA mailing list!
Due to Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu (HPAI), 168 million chickens have been culled and the price of eggs reached historical highs. This crisis can be stopped if the USDA permits the use of an HPAI vaccine to protect chickens, American consumers, and farmers. I was on a panel hosted by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute for a post-mortem on the bird flu, the resulting price of eggs, and how to prevent this from happening in the future. The panel was streamed on C-SPAN, and covered on the trade websites Agri-Pulse, WATT, and The Fence Post.
I also recently published an op-ed in Agri-Pulse on the importance of vaccination. Worryingly, I wrote that this might just be the beginning of sky-high egg prices: "Many experts now believe the virus has become endemic, with year-round detections in wild birds suggesting this pattern of price spikes will continue indefinitely without vaccination. Additionally, the longer bird flu is allowed to circulate in livestock populations, the greater the risk of a human pandemic."
In January, we published an annual report reviewing the development of in-ovo sexing, followed by an update in April. There has been a lot of big news:
The first in-ovo sexed chicks were hatched on U.S. soil.
Following Germany and France’s bans, the Netherlands plans to end male chick culling by 2026.
Walmart included in-ovo sexing as an important focus area for its egg suppliers.
There was a 40% increase in the number of in-ovo sexing machines worldwide in 2024.
The market continued to expand worldwide!
Perdue Farms became the first major US poultry producer to adopt on-farm hatching which could be one small step towards the chicken farm of the future.
In January, I gave a talk to 200 poultry executives at the poultry industry’s largest annual conference (IPPE) on "3 Underdiscussed Tends in the Poultry Industry". The talk focused on:
1) The mysterious decline in productivity across the US broiler sector.
2) The broader supply chain implications of technologies like in-ovo sexing, on-farm hatching, and in-ovo vaccination for the transition to the hatchery of the future.
3) The importance of animal welfare for American consumers and the role that technology plays in meeting these demands.
We launched a report on Brazilian consumer attitudes towards in-ovo sexing. In a nutshell, Brazilian's are willing to pay substantially more for eggs that come from companies using in-ovo sexing. For Portuguese speakers, here’s some of the coverage that it’s been getting.
We recently put together a report comparing the economics of fish harvesting with electric versus percussive stunning technology. Overall, we found that percussive stunning has significant economic benefits for salmonid farmers, and we identified a number of technological improvements needed to adapt the technology for smaller fish like carp. Please reach out if you’re interested in viewing the report.
In January, Niko McCarty wrote an essay on in-ovo sexing for The New Biology.
A New York Times op-ed on in-ovo sexing was released. Sy Montgomery writes that eggs from companies utilizing in-ovo sexing (NestFresh and Kipster) will become available in the early summer. Expect a lot more coverage among major American news services as summer approaches. It’s important to note that the additional cost of per egg should not exceed 1 cent, less than Montgomery estimates.
A new vaccination method has been shown to decrease lameness among boiler chickens by 50%! As I wrote in a note, "This study is super exciting because: 1) The effect size is very large. Other cheap interventions for lameness might only reduce it by a few percentage points 2) Vaccines are extremely cheap, and broilers are already vaccinated for other diseases like Marek's." Read the full study here.
Innovate Animal Ag, the think tank behind The Optimist’s Barn, is hiring! And if you read this newsletter, that’s a pretty good indicator of potentially being a fit. To learn more, visit our Careers page.