Interesting, but something about the economic story doesn’t quite add up, the claim being that for a chicken producer it doesn’t make sense (or at least may not make sense) to vaccinate due to the potential windfall profits of supply shocks. But surely then the returns to vaccinating are even higher because of guaranteed windfall profits when everyone else’s flocks are being culled!
So in a sense if you can decide individually you trade off between (lower cost, export eligible) if you vaccinate vs (extra profit without risk of cull in flu periods) if you do
So I would want to understand what the market failure is here. Are producers not able to decide individually because usda centralizes this too much? Or are industry organisations effectively applying cartel-like rules under the guise of export rules? It doesn’t seem like it obviously has to be a decision made collectively
I think the main problem here is that Trump probably doesn’t want to be viewed as pro-vaccine, since his support for vaccines during COVID is now viewed among conservatives as one of his biggest mistakes in office.
I mean I suspect that RFK will be trying to talk Trump out of making farmer vaccinate chickens.
The other issues seem surmountable with a bit of focus and effort, but I’m not sure Trump will get around the politics.
We should absolutely be vaccinating chickens for H5N1 to stabilize egg prices and improve animal welfare. We should also consider vaccinating only chickens in the egg industry, and not the meat industry.
H5N1 primarily affects chickens used for eggs since they live longer and are concentrated more in the flights paths of migratory birds. The meat industry is much less affected by H5N1, but cares a lot more about exports.
The two supply chains are completely separate, and in theory vaccination in the egg industry should not affect the chicken meat industry. Whether or not our trade agreements will reflect this is another question.
Now that think about agreeing not to export vaccinated chickens. That's the kind of inefficiencies that DOGE should be going after. Surely there must be things like that is any department that a staff is aware of. A new Secretary could comment and just ask for the 10 stupidest things we do?
Weird that producers don't want to vaccinate _and_ advertise that. In California they are legally required to be cage free, and some producers go to the trouble of following the law to be able to claim "organic" (vaccinations are not prohibited).
It all comes under the rubric of "animal welfare". I am not a vegan, but I also don't believe that animals should be needlessly tortured. I'd like to feel that egg producers are proud of the work that they do and the care they should put into doing it.
(And yes, I know that baby male chicks are killed, and even the egg-laying hens are eventually culled when their production slows.)
Proposed solution to short-term thinking: Wait for AI to solve aging, steadily raise the minimum age to hold office by a few months per year, and proportionally increase term lengths over time. The world looks a lot different when you expect to live to be 1000 and still be in office 30 years from when a policy goes into effect.
I'd like a better solution, but so far this is what I've got.
I appreciate Matt’s ability here to, if not pivot exactly, subtly rotate to issues and policy ideas that could actually appeal to our new overlords - and frame it in a way designed to appeal to them. We shall see if this leads anywhere but kudos to the SB team.
So why don't some farmers vaccinate so they can guarantee their birds aren't the ones wiped out. As long as free other people are doing it you can just sell domestically without a price hit. Or is it still a net cost?
I believe the USDA prohibits it, for trade reasons.
When France started doing vaccination of meat ducks, we banned all poultry imports from France, and duck imports from the entire EU. These trade restrictions are not generally super targeted.
The Democrats will be back in power someday. Matt acts as a one-man policy think tank, and the goal of those things in contemporary America is to come up with smart or smart-sounding policy proposals for your preferred party, which serve your ideological or economic goals.
They don't disappear when someone unsympathetic to them is elected, and politicians who like this think tank (or their advisors and appointees) can read the backlog.
I think vaccinating chickens is an absolute no-brainer.
Look, I know I'm an outlier in this comment section (and Americans in general*) because I actually care about animal welfare and I grieve the horrific suffering inflicted on sentient beings in the name of affordable meat and eggs and dairy. Full disclosure: I eat the occasional egg, and my husband eats more; I always make a point of buying free-range eggs with "Certified Humane" on the carton.
Anyway, I read of how chickens are killed when they're infected with avian flu. The vents to the building are closed and the heat is turned on until all the poor animals die of heatstroke. Sounds like a horrible way to die!
That alone, never mind any benefit to consumers, is reason enough for government to mandate vaccines. David R. below provided an estimate of how much this would increase costs to consumers: something like half a cent per dozen eggs? So, basically, next to nothing. And if you mandate that all egg producers do this, you eliminate the free-rider problem.
*yes, I know not all Slow Borers are Americans, but this is an American-dominated Substack that focuses mostly on American issues. Any non-American SBers reading this, I didn't mean to exclude you.
if you have a small backyard raising your own chickens is actually REALLY easy. It used to be quite common. And they will eat up most of your table scraps, plus give you good compost.
Thanks, we do have a backyard and Husband and I have been talking about buying some chickens, we just haven’t gotten around to it. We’ll have to make sure they have adequate protection from the many hawks and coyotes found in our area.
We did pasture raised hens for a while for the farmers market. We really liked Barred Rock hens. Very gentile and good layers even in the winter. Note we've never lost one due to hawks. We do put an electric net around their area to protect against other stuff, but we are out on 20 acres.
Agreed re: would have to negotiate with trade partners beforehand, good point. I wonder why they don’t allow vaccinations for chickens? Is this a crunchy-hippie “natural good, vaccines bad” ideology? Are there legitimate safety concerns?
I suspect that suffocation in a barn while temperatures are raised is in fact worse than the stun to the head followed by decapitation that they usually get. (At least, I’m pretty sure that standard practices require some modicum of non-cruelty in normal slaughter, even though they don’t for culling.)
Back at one point there were some precautions that at least the counterparties we wanted to export our chickens to wanted to have in the deals. Should we have made no deals to help us export chickens? That just leaves us worse off. At the time those rules were even plausibly protective against disease just not anymore.
If it’s just a foreigner’s THING — the Europeans and their naming rules — then sure you just grin and bear it. But bureaucracies ought to have immune systems that constantly scour themselves to find regulations that do not or no longer pass cost benefit tests. And Democrats that WANT government to do things ought to be really keen on such.
"The USDA said, in an email to Vox, that many of those agreements do not allow bird flu vaccination."
Well, don't make that kind of crazy deal! And why woud an importing country WANT to exclude vaccinated animals? It's better than unvaccinated maybe infected animals. And if you can inspect to exude infected animals then why doe it matter if they have been vaccinated or not?
My understanding is that tests for infected animals are historically mostly antibody tests, and all vaccinated animals have positive antibody tests. Matt mentions that now they often do molecular tests, where they look for flu rna rather than antibodies, so they should now be able to overcome this problem.
To add to this point the issue is that you can't test everyone and if no birds are vaccinated you can likely assume it's really likely you'll detect it with a random antibody sample.
Now I guess there is still a question here of whether a partial vaccine could lead to most birds fighting it off but a small reservoir that get it and if that matters.
Could individual states mandate vaccinations, or is this only tractable on the federal level?
Interesting, but something about the economic story doesn’t quite add up, the claim being that for a chicken producer it doesn’t make sense (or at least may not make sense) to vaccinate due to the potential windfall profits of supply shocks. But surely then the returns to vaccinating are even higher because of guaranteed windfall profits when everyone else’s flocks are being culled!
So in a sense if you can decide individually you trade off between (lower cost, export eligible) if you vaccinate vs (extra profit without risk of cull in flu periods) if you do
So I would want to understand what the market failure is here. Are producers not able to decide individually because usda centralizes this too much? Or are industry organisations effectively applying cartel-like rules under the guise of export rules? It doesn’t seem like it obviously has to be a decision made collectively
I think the main problem here is that Trump probably doesn’t want to be viewed as pro-vaccine, since his support for vaccines during COVID is now viewed among conservatives as one of his biggest mistakes in office.
I mean I suspect that RFK will be trying to talk Trump out of making farmer vaccinate chickens.
The other issues seem surmountable with a bit of focus and effort, but I’m not sure Trump will get around the politics.
I love the idea of chicken vaccine mandates as a wedge issue
We should absolutely be vaccinating chickens for H5N1 to stabilize egg prices and improve animal welfare. We should also consider vaccinating only chickens in the egg industry, and not the meat industry.
H5N1 primarily affects chickens used for eggs since they live longer and are concentrated more in the flights paths of migratory birds. The meat industry is much less affected by H5N1, but cares a lot more about exports.
The two supply chains are completely separate, and in theory vaccination in the egg industry should not affect the chicken meat industry. Whether or not our trade agreements will reflect this is another question.
Now that think about agreeing not to export vaccinated chickens. That's the kind of inefficiencies that DOGE should be going after. Surely there must be things like that is any department that a staff is aware of. A new Secretary could comment and just ask for the 10 stupidest things we do?
We just need to convince people that autistic chickens are tastier than neurotypical chickens and lay 5 times as many eggs.
Weird that producers don't want to vaccinate _and_ advertise that. In California they are legally required to be cage free, and some producers go to the trouble of following the law to be able to claim "organic" (vaccinations are not prohibited).
It all comes under the rubric of "animal welfare". I am not a vegan, but I also don't believe that animals should be needlessly tortured. I'd like to feel that egg producers are proud of the work that they do and the care they should put into doing it.
(And yes, I know that baby male chicks are killed, and even the egg-laying hens are eventually culled when their production slows.)
Proposed solution to short-term thinking: Wait for AI to solve aging, steadily raise the minimum age to hold office by a few months per year, and proportionally increase term lengths over time. The world looks a lot different when you expect to live to be 1000 and still be in office 30 years from when a policy goes into effect.
I'd like a better solution, but so far this is what I've got.
I appreciate Matt’s ability here to, if not pivot exactly, subtly rotate to issues and policy ideas that could actually appeal to our new overlords - and frame it in a way designed to appeal to them. We shall see if this leads anywhere but kudos to the SB team.
Agree (and note that it's strategically un-paywalled). Well-played, SB!
So why don't some farmers vaccinate so they can guarantee their birds aren't the ones wiped out. As long as free other people are doing it you can just sell domestically without a price hit. Or is it still a net cost?
I believe the USDA prohibits it, for trade reasons.
When France started doing vaccination of meat ducks, we banned all poultry imports from France, and duck imports from the entire EU. These trade restrictions are not generally super targeted.
I now see the course of the next four years.
Slow Boring: Here's a very smart policy.
Trump administration: Snore.
The Democrats will be back in power someday. Matt acts as a one-man policy think tank, and the goal of those things in contemporary America is to come up with smart or smart-sounding policy proposals for your preferred party, which serve your ideological or economic goals.
They don't disappear when someone unsympathetic to them is elected, and politicians who like this think tank (or their advisors and appointees) can read the backlog.
I think vaccinating chickens is an absolute no-brainer.
Look, I know I'm an outlier in this comment section (and Americans in general*) because I actually care about animal welfare and I grieve the horrific suffering inflicted on sentient beings in the name of affordable meat and eggs and dairy. Full disclosure: I eat the occasional egg, and my husband eats more; I always make a point of buying free-range eggs with "Certified Humane" on the carton.
Anyway, I read of how chickens are killed when they're infected with avian flu. The vents to the building are closed and the heat is turned on until all the poor animals die of heatstroke. Sounds like a horrible way to die!
That alone, never mind any benefit to consumers, is reason enough for government to mandate vaccines. David R. below provided an estimate of how much this would increase costs to consumers: something like half a cent per dozen eggs? So, basically, next to nothing. And if you mandate that all egg producers do this, you eliminate the free-rider problem.
*yes, I know not all Slow Borers are Americans, but this is an American-dominated Substack that focuses mostly on American issues. Any non-American SBers reading this, I didn't mean to exclude you.
if you have a small backyard raising your own chickens is actually REALLY easy. It used to be quite common. And they will eat up most of your table scraps, plus give you good compost.
Thanks, we do have a backyard and Husband and I have been talking about buying some chickens, we just haven’t gotten around to it. We’ll have to make sure they have adequate protection from the many hawks and coyotes found in our area.
my wife built a mobile chicken mansion for them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJDpkqguVI
We did pasture raised hens for a while for the farmers market. We really liked Barred Rock hens. Very gentile and good layers even in the winter. Note we've never lost one due to hawks. We do put an electric net around their area to protect against other stuff, but we are out on 20 acres.
Agreed re: would have to negotiate with trade partners beforehand, good point. I wonder why they don’t allow vaccinations for chickens? Is this a crunchy-hippie “natural good, vaccines bad” ideology? Are there legitimate safety concerns?
I suspect that suffocation in a barn while temperatures are raised is in fact worse than the stun to the head followed by decapitation that they usually get. (At least, I’m pretty sure that standard practices require some modicum of non-cruelty in normal slaughter, even though they don’t for culling.)
So why not just do the right thing [not sign dumb protocols] without needing to argue about it?
Back at one point there were some precautions that at least the counterparties we wanted to export our chickens to wanted to have in the deals. Should we have made no deals to help us export chickens? That just leaves us worse off. At the time those rules were even plausibly protective against disease just not anymore.
If it’s just a foreigner’s THING — the Europeans and their naming rules — then sure you just grin and bear it. But bureaucracies ought to have immune systems that constantly scour themselves to find regulations that do not or no longer pass cost benefit tests. And Democrats that WANT government to do things ought to be really keen on such.
"The USDA said, in an email to Vox, that many of those agreements do not allow bird flu vaccination."
Well, don't make that kind of crazy deal! And why woud an importing country WANT to exclude vaccinated animals? It's better than unvaccinated maybe infected animals. And if you can inspect to exude infected animals then why doe it matter if they have been vaccinated or not?
You can see our ban on French poultry, introduced when they started vaccinating ducks, here:
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/agency-announcements/usda-protects-us-poultry-restrictions-poultry-poultry-products-france
One argument we use is that the vaccine might make it possible for the virus to circulate asymptomatically.
I rather suspected that other people's ban was payback for our ban!
My understanding is that tests for infected animals are historically mostly antibody tests, and all vaccinated animals have positive antibody tests. Matt mentions that now they often do molecular tests, where they look for flu rna rather than antibodies, so they should now be able to overcome this problem.
To add to this point the issue is that you can't test everyone and if no birds are vaccinated you can likely assume it's really likely you'll detect it with a random antibody sample.
Now I guess there is still a question here of whether a partial vaccine could lead to most birds fighting it off but a small reservoir that get it and if that matters.
No Egg Is Illegal.