Pssst! Wanna Buy Some Eggs?
Big Cluck Is Laughing All the Way to the Bank
Do you know what happens when you put two million chickens in a bunch of crowded buildings? If one gets the avian flu, they’re all gonna die. That’s the cure we have right now. Over the past three years, about 166 million birds have been killed, according to the Agriculture Department.
According to the USDA’s food outlook as of February 25, egg prices are expected to increase by 41.1% this year. Just a month ago, the Department expected egg prices to increase 20% this year.
Many retail outlets have imposed limits on how many eggs can be purchased by customers. Chain restaurants like Waffle House and Denny’s have imposed a surcharge on eggs.
Now the virus is spreading to dairy cattle, opening the door for price increases in beef, butter, and cheese prices. Scientists now fear it will mutate into a form that can be transmitted person-to-person, likely touching off another pandemic, potentially much deadlier than the last one.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented 70 human cases and one death nationwide since 2022. So far, none have involved person-to-person transmission, which would significantly increase the risk of a pandemic. Of those who have become infected, 41 have been exposed to infected dairy cattle and 24 have worked in the poultry industry.
A $590 million contract awarded to Moderna to aid in vaccine development for bird flu is being reevaluated, according to Bloomberg News, Vaccine-skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. now leads HHS and halted work on a mRNA influenza vaccine matched to strains currently circulating in cows and birds. Mexico is already vaccinating animals against the virus and seeing success, by the way.
FYI- Bloomberg also reported the government pushed Vaxart Inc. to stop work on a $453 million federal contract for research on a new oral Covid vaccine.
In East San Diego, a deceased cat was tagged by the County Health Department as being infected with the virus after being fed a commercial brand that included raw chicken meat.
Via the San Diego Union Tribune:
Infections in cats, and mammals generally, are of concern, added Dr. Erik Berg, assistant medical director of the county’s epidemiology and immunization services branch, because they illustrate the species-hopping capabilities of H5N1 bird flu, which has now begun to infect humans, but has not yet evolved the ability to transmit from person to person.
“It raises concerns that the virus is changing. We don’t usually see influenza in cats, and so it raises a lot of questions more than it provides answers,” Berg said. “The overall current risk to the public, the human public, is still low, but there’s certainly a concern that we’re going to see more infections in animals and different species, including humans.”
In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that H5N1 is starting to show up among humans in San Diego County. The region’s wastewater detection system detected an H5 bird flu strain in samples taken on Sept. 1. Additional detections, Berg said, appeared on Jan. 1 and Feb. 17 of 2025. Regular genetic analysis of samples collected from local residents who test positive for flu infection have not so far discovered any H5N1 cases.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza in mammals has been documented 514 times since May 2022 by the USDA. So far in 2025, two bottlenose dolphins, two harbor seals and a pair of red foxes have been added to the list.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has announced a plan to invest $1 billion in strategies to rein in soaring egg prices while admitting the egg market won’t stabilize for another “three to six months.”
The plan sets out $500 million for improving biosecurity on farms, $400 million for providing financial assistance for farmers and $100 million for vaccine research, and promises to reduce regulations on egg production and “exploring temporary import options.”
A plan is just words on paper if there’s no way of implementing it, as the USDA accidentally fired "several" agency employees who are working on the response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak. The Department says they’re working to rescind the termination letters
Finally, the price crisis on eggs may well be yet another example of how monopolization screws Americans. Via the American Prospect:
An analysis from Farm Action, a farmer-led activist group that focuses on antitrust issues, makes that case in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. The egg-laying hen population has only fallen by about 10 percent, and there is suggestive evidence that the egg industry, which is heavily concentrated in only a handful of firms, is tacitly coordinating to strangle the pipeline of new laying hens so that they can keep supply low and prices high.
Profits at Cal-Maine, the largest U.S. producer, have skyrocketed from about $180 million in all of 2020 to $356 million in just the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. (Panic buying is probably playing into the situation as well, as people purchase eggs en masse before the price goes up even more.)
Furthermore, insofar as bird flu is harming the egg supply, it is largely thanks to the same hyper-concentrated structure of the industry. Canada has barely been affected by the virus because its egg farms are much smaller, with an average of about 25,000 hens each. American farms typically have about two million birds, and they also tend to be packed together in nightmarishly cramped buildings. A better place for a virus to spread is hard to imagine, and any infection at a farm with two million hens will see many more deaths.
Gosh, if we only had a government that could mitigate and prevent this crisis from happening again. Instead of “deregulating” the egg industry, perhaps breaking up Big Cluck and insisting on humane practices would help.
Wait! There’s more… Make Tuberculosis Great Again!
Via the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy:
According to an archived page from the now defunct USAID website, since 2000, USAID and its partners have saved the lives of more than 58 million TB patients. Name any country with a high burden of TB, and you can likely find a program that receives USAID funding. And many were stopped overnight.
Sources say the funding freeze is affecting all parts of the TB ecosystem. Over the past 2 weeks, in high-burden TB countries around the world, USAID-funded TB diagnosis and treatment services have had to close after receiving "stop-work" orders, leaving patients unable to obtain medicine or receive prompt diagnosis. TB medications that have already been purchased aren't being distributed because USAID-funded workers in many countries are no longer getting paid.
Collection and transportation of sputum samples—which are analyzed for diagnosis or to see if medication is working—have been interrupted. Community-based organizations that work to connect marginalized communities to TB services have had to stop their work. Clinical trials that could lead to shorter and better treatments for drug-resistant TB patients have been paused.
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Upcoming Consumer Boycott Actions
March 7-14: Amazon, including Whole Foods and Prime purchases (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post).
March 21-28: Nestlé, whose brands include Nescafé, Toll House, Stouffer’s and Purina.
March 28: A 24-hour economic blackout of all large retailers.
April 7 to April 13: Walmart.
April 18: A 24-hour economic blackout of all large retailers.
April 21-27: General Mills, whose brands include Betty Crocker, Cheerios, Gold Medal and Pillsbury.
Elon Musk’s Attacks On Judges Are Getting More Racist and More Dangerous by Jay Willis at Balls And Strikes
On February 10, after Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the reinstatement of the head of a federal whistleblower protection agency whom Trump tried to remove from office, an irate Musk tweeted that “democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup.” As is always the case when conservatives employ such terms, Musk’s working definition of an “activist” judge encompasses any judge who does something he does not like.
No judge has been subjected to more of Musk’s vitriol than Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who recently set a deadline for the White House to release illegally-withheld funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development. (On Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily paused Ali’s order to give the Trump administration time to respond.) “Impeach Ali!” Musk wrote, replying to a tweet that identified Ali, in time-honored dog-whistling fashion, as “39-year-old Canadian-born Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, the first Muslim and Arab DC judge.” Another Musk tweet quoted with approval a conservative media personality who called Ali a “dual citizen” who must be “impeached and investigated” for “stopping the President from cutting fraudulent spending.”
In still another tweet, Musk veered even further into unvarnished racism and smirking xenophobia. “Tragic that Amir Ali could have been writing software instead of forcing taxpayers to fund bogus NGOs,” he wrote. “He’s another victim of the woke mind virus.”
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‘Cruel and thoughtless’: Trump fires hundreds at US climate agency Noaa by Daharna Noor and Gabrielle Canon at The Guardian
“This will cost American lives,” said the congresswoman and ranking member of the House science, space and technology committee, Zoe Lofgren, in a written statement. Her comments were issued alongside Congressman Gabe Amo’s, the ranking member of the subcommittee on environment, after news of the firings broke.
“By firing essential staff who work tirelessly on behalf of the American people, President Trump and Elon Musk are playing politics with our national security and public safety,” Amo said. “Leaving Noaa understaffed will inevitably lead to additional chaos and confusion – I call on them to rehire these public servants immediately before preventable tragedy strikes.”
Lutnick assured Congress during his confirmation hearing that Noaa would not be dismantled under his watch. “It seems either Lutnick willingly lied to Congress and the American people or that he has caved in record-breaking time to the destructive agenda of the Trump-Musk regime,” said Dr Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior social scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World by Stephanie Nolan for The New York Times
Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding from the United States for lifesaving work.
“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began.
The terse notes ended funding for some 5,800 projects that had been financed by the United States Agency for International Development, indicating that a tumultuous period when the Trump administration said it was freezing projects for ostensible review was over, and that any faint hope American assistance might continue had ended.
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