USDA Paid Over $500M For Culling Poultry On Farms With H5N1

The New York Times (4/2, Jacobs) reports that the US Department of Agriculture paid over $500 million to poultry producers for birds that were culled because of the discovery of H5N1 on their farms. The largest recipients were Jennie-O Turkey Store at about $88 million and Tyson Foods at about $30 million. Over 82 million birds have been culled in the US since February 2022, of the over nine billion birds raised each year. Critics of the policy say that the compensation “with no strings attached...is encouraging poultry growers to continue the very practices that heighten the risk of contagion.” As an alternative, some “have been urging the White House to embrace a vaccination campaign.”