In an interview with Breitbart, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins said vaccines would not be used on chickens to combat egg prices.
Rollins said vaccinating chickens was “off the table.”
Exclusive — USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins: Vaccines ‘off the Table’ in Fight for Lower Egg Prices https://t.co/FCRc8O0Te6
— Christiane Northrup (@DrChrisNorthrup) March 7, 2025
Initially, Rollins announced a $1 billion plan the USDA formulated to alleviate soaring egg prices.
One part of the plan was to research possible vaccines for livestock, such as chickens and cattle, against bird flu.
Rollins told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation this week that “not enough research has been done” on bird flu vaccines for livestock.
WATCH:
Secretary of Ag Brooke Rollins states they are holding off any type of bird flu vaccine as “not enough research has been done”
I’m glad they are not rolling this out and forcing the vaccine but I have my reservations this won’t be pushed or forced in the near future. pic.twitter.com/bjRwAMjYFQ
— The Regenaissance (@_Regenaissance) March 7, 2025
Rollins told Breitbart that she pulled vaccines “off the table” after learning how ineffectiveness such vaccines are in other countries.
Per Breitbart:
The fifth plank of the plan, though, was the exploration of possible vaccines of livestock like chickens or cattle against the avian flu. But Rollins told Breitbart News that as she has learned more about such proposals, this will not be an effective way to deal with the issue—and ruled it out as a possibility, saying “I pulled that off the table” upon learning how ineffective such vaccines have been in other nations like Mexico.
“The fifth one, that has perhaps taken a little bit more of the space than I had assumed was the vaccine piece,” Rollins said. “The idea was that, initially before I rolled the plan out, the thought was maybe the vaccine is the solution here and that maybe we need to stick a couple hundred million chickens with vaccines so we could potentially move out of this crisis quicker. But what I learned is that looking at countries like Mexico that actually do vaccinate their egg-layers is that those chickens have to be stuck three or four or five times with those vaccine shots and then 80 to 83 percent of those chickens still get the avian bird flu. So I pulled that off the table and for a lot of reasons we are not going to be moving off the table on mandatory vaccines now or frankly ever. So putting that money into the research into making sure it’s effective and safe and in my conversations with the NIH and the CDC and others there are some real concerns on the vaccine side. One of my favorite and it sort of affected me significantly was Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska who is a fifth-generation farmer and is also a veterinarian, he said to me ‘Brooke, don’t ever forget, the virus always wins.’ I think that’s what we’re seeing. So that’s been an interesting piece of this, and I think the research on therapeutics is going to be very important perhaps pivoting away from a vaccine if necessary. And one other thing that has been falsely reported in the news is that the USDA approved a dairy cattle vaccine for the avian bird flu and that just was wrong. I think that has just moved into the process, but that won’t even get to my desk for another year or so. So a lot has to be done there, but also if at all possible the goal would be to move away from that as the answer.”
Rollins elaborated in a followup answer saying that “absolutely not,” the vaccine will never be mandated for livestock, and any voluntary consideration of any such vaccines is at least a year away, probably longer if it is ever considered.
“Right now, the answer is absolutely not based on all of the research,” Rollins said. “I’ve visited an avian flu research facility last week. I’m going to another one next week in Georgia. I’m in constant contact with our veterinarians and our state Ag Commissioners. It seems like a very simple and easy and quick answer but ultimately the repercussions that we don’t fully understand could be so significant that we just have to go in a different direction. So again I think there is some misinformation out there, and mis-reporting, that USDA is somehow moving at light speed toward a vaccine of dairy cattle and egg-layers but the 100 percent answer to that is no, it’s not true, and we have a tremendous amount of work to do before we would even consider that as a potential solution and that is at least a year or more away.”
“We need to ensure it will actually help the problem—not make the virus stronger and jump to other species,” Rollins said.
WATCH:
🚨MAHA just got great news.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced “not enough research has been done” to roll out avian flu vaccines.
“We need to ensure it will actually help the problem—not make the virus stronger and jump to other species.” https://t.co/w7dLVxqtAs pic.twitter.com/xESFSzLHaY
— American Values 🗽 (@AVPac_US) March 6, 2025
NewsNation reports:
The agriculture secretary pushed back against criticism that the current egg price spike was solely the result of avian flu, presenting a chart showing price fluctuations over 40 years.
She attributed the current situation to “the high cost of inputs, the unbelievable amount of regulation, the shutting down of our export markets.”
“The president is with our ag community,” Rollins said. “While the next short term may be slightly unpredictable… for the long term, what the president has said is that our ag community will be more prosperous than perhaps it’s been in our entire lifetime.”
The industry, and most experts, squarely blame bird flu for the soaring egg prices. More than 166 million birds have been slaughtered to contain the virus. Some 30 million egg layers have been wiped out just since January, significantly disrupting egg supplies.
WATCH:
