USDA keeps paying the bird flu bill. It stopped paying for the people who'd prevent it.
Summary
APHIS has committed $1.2 billion in indemnity to poultry producers since 2022 for flocks it destroys after the fact. Its own field staff — the vets and inspectors who would catch an outbreak first — vanished from 241 counties in a single year, just as bird flu returned to a dozen states.
The checkbook
Since the current outbreak began in February 2022, the Congressional Research Service reports that 's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service () had committed $1.811 billion to the response through February 2025 — the most recent period for which a full breakdown exists. Most of it, $1.195 billion, is indemnity: a check to the farmer for every bird and egg destroyed to contain the disease. The rest pays contractors to do the killing, composting, and disinfecting ($353 million), and covers the field staff and state cooperative agreements needed to run the response ($263 million).
View data as table
| Indemnity payments to producers | $1,195M | of $1,811M committed |
|---|---|---|
| Depopulation, disposal & virus elimination | $353M | of $1,811M committed |
| Personnel, contractors & field costs | $263M | of $1,811M committed |
It is, by design, a payment made after the fact. Indemnity does not stop an outbreak; it compensates for one that has already happened. By April 2025 the count stood at 168.62 million birds lost since 2022, and the outbreak has kept running since — table-egg layers hit hardest, which is why retail egg prices rode the outbreak from $6.23 a dozen at their March 2025 peak down to $2.19 by May 2026, only for a fresh wave of detections, including the Utah case, to put that decline at risk again.
The vanishing inspector
The other side of the ledger is who is left to catch the next flock before it has to be indemnified at all. A bipartisan group of eleven U.S. senators, in a June 9, 2026 letter to Secretary Brooke Rollins, laid out the toll: began 2025 with at least one employee stationed in 1,374 counties nationwide. By year's end, headcount had fallen to zero in 241 of them. In Multnomah County, Oregon, the letter notes, lost 20% of its local staff in 2025; by year's end, 59 U.S. counties no longer had a Food Safety and Inspection Service veterinarian stationed locally at all.
View data as table
| Start of 2025 | 1,374 counties | had at least one APHIS employee |
|---|---|---|
| End of 2025 | 1,133 counties | 1,374 minus 241 counties with zero APHIS staff left |
The losses trace to the 2025 Deferred Resignation Program, which NPR reported drew more than 15,000 employees — under 15% of the department's workforce — with the cuts landing hardest on 's Veterinary Services division, which was projected to lose 23% of its staff. leadership tried to walk some of it back once the scale became clear — NPR later reported the agency was scrambling to fill roles it had just emptied — but the counties the senators' letter counted at zero staff were still at zero a full year later.
The takeaway
- The money flows after the damage, not before it. $1.2 billion in indemnity is compensation for flocks already destroyed — it buys nothing in prevention.
- The prevention side lost the staff to do the job. 241 counties that had an employee at the start of 2025 had none by the end of it, the same counties that would be first to spot the next outbreak.
- The outbreak didn't wait for the workforce to recover. A fresh commercial detection in Utah in July 2026 shows the disease is still finding flocks — indemnity checks included.
Indemnity and response-cost figures cover Feb. 2022 through Feb. 2025, the most recent period has broken out in detail; the outbreak and its indemnity payments have continued since. County-staffing figures cover calendar year 2025 as reported to Congress.
Sources
- Congressional Research Service, The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) Outbreak in Poultry, 2022-Present (R48518, April 29, 2025) — the $1.811 billion total HPAI response commitment, its $1.195B/$353M/$263M breakdown, and the 168.62-million-bird cumulative loss figure, all compiled from program data. congress.gov/crs-product/R48518
- Sens. Jeff Merkley, Amy Klobuchar, Tammy Baldwin, Adam Schiff, Richard Durbin, Edward Markey, Ron Wyden, Tina Smith, Chris Van Hollen, Ruben Gallego, and Cory Booker, letter to Secretary Brooke Rollins and Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden (June 9, 2026) — the 1,374-to-1,133 county staffing collapse, the Multnomah County and -veterinarian figures. merkley.senate.gov
- NPR, "After paying people to leave, one federal agency is scrambling to fill positions" (May 3, 2025) — the 15,000-employee Deferred Resignation Program total and its share of 's workforce. npr.org
- NPR, " animal and plant health staff exodus raises fears on farms" (May 30, 2025) — reporting on 's attempt to rehire staff after the resignation wave. npr.org
- Government Executive, "Some agencies are walking back workforce cuts with critical functions at risk of failure" (April 2025) — the 23% projected staffing loss at Veterinary Services and the National Animal Health Laboratory Network's quality-assurance staff losses. govexec.com
- AgroNews, "Avian influenza hits 1.2 million Utah hens" (July 8, 2026), citing confirmation of the July 6, 2026 Cache County, Utah detection that ended a 30-day national lull in commercial-poultry cases. agronews.com
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Price: Eggs, Grade A, Large, U.S. City Average, via FRED (series APU0000708111) — the $6.23 March 2025 peak and $2.19 May 2026 retail egg-price figures. fred.stlouisfed.org
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On July 6, 2026, confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza in a commercial egg operation in Cache County, Utah — 1.2 million hens, destroyed on a single order. It was the first commercial detection in a month, according to USDA APHIS data reported by AgroNews, a brief lull in an outbreak now in its fifth year. Every time a flock like that goes down, the government's response runs on two separate tracks: a checkbook that keeps opening, and a workforce that keeps shrinking.