THE “SLOW-MOTION SHIPWRECK” OF A FAMILY FARM DUE TO AVIAN INFLUENZA (AI)
Hickman’s Family Farms, headquartered in Buckeye, Arizona, USA, has been forced to lay off hundreds of workers this year after highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) wiped out 95% of its laying hens, approximately 6 million birds. The family-owned company is the largest egg producer in Arizona and the Southwest and ranks among the top 20 in the USA.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filing the company submitted to the state of Arizona estimated a reduction of 85 employees. However, in an interview with Feedstuffs, company president and CEO Glenn Hickman said the actual number is far greater: only around 200 people remain out of approximately 850 employees.
Hickman said that only the farm in Grand Junction, Colorado, has been spared from HPAI, and that his farm in Maricopa, Arizona, began restocking in early May, leaving only 300,000 birds remaining.
He has repeatedly urged, as have many other poultry producers in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to greenlight a vaccine to protect poultry against HPAI, as the virus disproportionately affects laying hens and turkeys, and an outbreak typically means the complete loss of the flock. The USDA granted Zoetis a conditional licence for a vaccine in early 2025, but has yet to approve its widespread use.
Also participating in the interview was Dr. Kay Russo of RSM Consulting, a dairy industry professional and board-certified poultry veterinarian who was part of a team that helped diagnose the first case of HPAI in dairy cattle. RSM works with Wilson Vet Co., the veterinary firm Hickman contacted.
According to Dr. Russo, cross-species transmission between cattle and poultry “never really seemed relevant until March 2024, when we had an encounter with this virus in both species, and since then I have been involved in response efforts, advocating for control measures.” Russo added that approximately 70% of bird losses last year were associated with transmission from dairy cattle.
Hickman said that a dairy operation near his farms has been intermittently contracting HPAI H5N1 infections throughout the year, and while mild for the cows, it has not been so for his birds. “Our hens fell ill due to proximity to this dairy, and we had a sort of slow-motion accident from 16 May, with farm after farm dying to the point that we went from 6.5 million to 300,000 in just three weeks.”
Vaccination and the trade debate
While the egg and turkey sectors, as well as the dairy industry, have called for broader vaccine use, the broiler sector is reluctant to take any action that could hamper trade, as several countries do not accept imports of meat from vaccinated poultry for fear that the vaccine could mask the virus.
“The reason we are not vaccinating birds in this country today is because of trade implications. … But I don’t care anymore,” Hickman said, adding: “I’m not suggesting they need to vaccinate their chickens. If they don’t want to vaccinate their birds, that’s fine — I don’t care. But I would like to vaccinate my hens and protect my flocks, and I can’t because of the obstacles the chicken sector is putting in the way of this.”
He pointed out that the USDA’s response to this year’s HPAI-related egg price increases sent contradictory messages. “We had an egg shortage, so our USDA, to address it, relaxed some of our sanitary and phytosanitary standards to allow eggs to come in from other countries,” Hickman said.
The irony is that one of those countries is Mexico, which has stated that it does not accept meat from animals vaccinated against avian influenza. “If we allow Mexican producers to protect their flocks and ship their product to the United States, why can’t I protect my birds and keep my markets? That inconsistency is something I simply cannot come to terms with,” Hickman said.
For her part, Russo explains that Mexico does not vaccinate to eradicate the virus but to protect its population and food supply, because there the disease is endemic. She said the U.S. needs to act because this is now a domestic food security matter.
A high price to pay
The vast majority of U.S. eggs stay within the domestic market. With chicken, on the other hand, Hickman estimates that around 40% of the dark meat produced by the U.S. broiler sector is exported. “Those leg quarters go somewhere, and that is my frustration: we are protecting that surplus market to keep domestic chicken prices high while allowing the egg sector to bear the brunt of this.”
Then there are the job losses. Hickman said some employees had been with the company for 20 years. He also lamented the abrupt end of the company’s prisoner re-entry programme, which for 30 years had helped rehabilitate inmates and “teach them how to hold down a job.” The recidivism rate during the three years of the programme was 5%, compared with an average of around 80% for all released inmates, he said. “I don’t take it lightly at all,” Hickman said of those losses.
Consumers are paying twice over for the costs of AI.
Between what the USDA has paid producers in taxpayer-funded indemnities and the higher egg prices consumers are paying in stores, “that person is getting a double hit when buying my dead birds and paying more for eggs,” Hickman said. “I believe that in 2024 alone, that figure was around $11 billion in higher egg prices and something like $1 billion in indemnities.”
By comparison, he estimates that the most expensive vaccine costs around one cent per bird, so vaccinating the national flock of approximately 300 million birds would cost around $30 million, “and we could stop this nonsense right now.” It is simple arithmetic — “the kind of nonsense that politicians in Washington, D.C. just don’t see. How can anyone make sense of it? In any other country in the world, that would be the solution they would apply,” Hickman states.
Updating the playbook
The USDA announced an avian influenza response plan in February that included spending up to $100 million on HPAI vaccine research and other therapies. According to a recent Reuters report, the USDA could unveil a more formal written strategy, possibly this month, after engaging with industry leaders on a plan to help assess whether vaccines would affect trade.
Hickman and Russo said that the United Egg Producers and the American Egg Board have been collaborating with government officials on a plan.
Russo believes that the U.S. HPAI approach will include a surveillance component: “We are going to eradicate it if we still find it in vaccinated flocks.” She said that Hickman’s is seeking epidemiologists to study how the virus enters and spreads between poultry and dairy farms in hopes of identifying any vulnerabilities, but that even so, “I think we are going to need more tools than just plugging a few holes here and there”.
Russo explained: “This threat is no longer seasonal — it is no longer tied to waterfowl moving the virus along migratory routes. And because of that, now that we have multiple endemic hosts in the U.S., we are going to need more tools and to update our approach. My hope is that the USDA comes out with something that is workable and on a timeline that is not years away, because that simply will not be enough.”
The most important question, according to Russo, is “at what point does domestic food security take priority over trade? — because this is what we saw as an extraordinary example when egg prices rose the way they did a few months ago.” And Hickman adds: “what happened to us didn’t have to happen.”
For more information:
-. Hickman’s Family Farms (Buckeye, Arizona, USA) official notification.
-. Poultry production in the USA
-. Worker vaccination on poultry farms at NeXusAvicultura.com
-. Poultry vaccination strategies against Avian Influenza