WASHINGTON — The US Department of Agriculture last week issued a conditional license for an avian flu vaccine for use in chickens, amid an outbreak ravaging poultry flocks, contributing to the sky-high price of eggs.
Zoetis, the manufacturer behind the vaccine, announced the conditional approval Friday, saying in a news release its scientists had begun updating its existing avian flu vaccine in 2022.
“We’ve been working with the administration and with Congress, and we’re very excited today to get the licensure for (the vaccine) in poultry, which we think will be a tool that we will help support the government as they deem necessary,” Zoetis CEO Kristin Peck told CNBC on Friday.
The conditional license was granted based on the “the demonstration of safety, purity, and reasonable expectation of efficacy,” Zoetis said. A conditional license can generally be used to address an emergency situation or special circumstance, the company noted, and is issued for a set period of time.
The company has previously developed vaccines for avian flu, including one used by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect California condors in 2023, Zoetis said, noting, “The decision to vaccinate commercial poultry flocks rests solely with national regulatory authorities in consultation with their local poultry sector,” the company’s news release said.
CNN reached out to the USDA for comment Sunday.
While other countries already vaccinate chickens against bird flu, the US approach has long been focused on eradicating the virus, mainly through culling flocks of birds when a case is identified. Historically, vaccination has been thought to carry a number of complications, including making it difficult to detect the virus in inoculated birds and trade concerns.
But the strategy may be shifting as bird flu spreads to other types of animals, like cattle, and becomes more difficult to contain: Over the last 30 days, 146 flocks have been confirmed to have avian flu, affecting more than 20.5 million birds, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, part of the USDA. More than 150 million birds have been affected since the current outbreak began in 2022.
About 70 bird flu infections have been confirmed in people in the US since March 2024, and an older person in Louisiana died last year. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, has said the risk to the public remains low, though those who work on farms with infected animals or who have backyard poultry flocks are at a higher risk of infection.
Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett is preparing, along with Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins, to present a plan to President Donald Trump to combat bird flu, including options that would sidestep the need to kill chickens, he told CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday.
“What we need to do is have better ways with biosecurity and medication and so on” to avoid killing chickens, Hassett said. “And so having a smart perimeter is what we’re working on, and we’re finalizing the ideas about how to do that with the best scientists in government.”
In the meantime, Americans can continue to expect high prices for eggs this year due to the ongoing avian flu outbreak and inflation, according to new estimates.
Egg prices are estimated to increase about 20% in 2025, compared to about 2.2% for food prices in general, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s price outlook. Beef, coffee and orange juice are among groceries with higher prices, but eggs are uniquely affected by the aggressive strain of avian flu, which has strained supply.
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