By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Deborah Van Fleet for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

If you consider yourself a conscious consumer, grocery shopping can get very complicated very quickly, with countless different labels implying that the food inside was produced humanely. It's important to know what these labels mean, and that can be difficult with a term like "organic," which is often used loosely in casual conversation. But what does meat or dairy being organic really mean for animals, farmers and consumers? We break the latest rules down in this explainer.

To start, the answer is more complicated than you might think. Just six percent of all food sold in the U.S. is organic, but any meat or produce that's marketed as such has to be approved by the United States Department of Agriculture. Although the Trump administration had suspended any updates to the organic standards, the Biden Administration reversed that decision, and earlier this year, the USDA announced its updated rules for organically-produced livestock.

The change was the culmination of a years-long push by some organic farmers to improve how animals are treated on organic farms, and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack celebrated the changes as a win for animals, producers and consumers.

"This organic poultry and livestock standard establishes clear and strong standards that will increase the consistency of animal welfare practices in organic production and in how these practices are enforced," Vilsack said in a statement. "Competitive markets help deliver greater value to all producers, regardless of size."

Before looking at what "organic" means under these changes, however, it's important to know what it doesn't mean.

Does 'Organic' Mean Pesticide-Free?

No. Organic doesn't mean pesticide-free, and this is a common misconception. Although the standards for organically-produced livestock do place some limits on the use of medications, antibiotics, parasiticides, herbicides and other synthetic chemicals in livestock farming, they don't prohibit the use of all pesticides - just most of the synthetic ones, though even then, there are exceptions.

What Do the Current Organic Rules for Livestock Require?

The purpose of the USDA's new Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards is to ensure "clear, consistent and enforceable" animal welfare standards, according to the Organic Trade Association. The rules cover all types of livestock: non-aviary species like lamb and cattle have one set of requirements, while birds of all kinds have another. There are also some additional rules that apply to specific species, such as pigs.

It's long - over 100 pages in total. Some of the rules are fairly simple, like the bans on certain practices, including gestation crates for pregnant pigs; others, like those addressing how much space livestock must have in their living quarters, are much more lengthy and complex.

One thing to keep in mind is that these rules only apply to farms and companies that want their products to be certified organic. It's perfectly legal for producers to ignore all of these requirements, so long as they don't market or refer to their products as "organic." They might instead opt for one of the food labels with less or no regulation at all, like "natural."

Lastly, although these rules take effect in 2025, there's one big exception: Any farm that's certified as organic before 2025 will have until 2029 to abide by the new standards. This provision effectively gives existing producers, including the largest ones, more time to adapt to the new rules than any new farms.

With that said, let's take a look at what these standards are.

New Organic Rules for Livestock's Outdoor Access

The new rules require organically-produced livestock to have access to outdoor space, a privilege many livestock are not afforded. Under the new rules, non-avian livestock like cows and lamb must have year-round access to "the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, clean water for drinking, and direct sunlight." If that outdoor area has soil, it must be maintained "as appropriate for the season, climate, geography, species of livestock." The previous rule required outdoor access, but didn't specify any maintenance requirements for outdoor areas.

Birds, meanwhile, need to have "year-round access to the outdoors, soil, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, direct sunlight, clean water for drinking, materials for dust bathing, and adequate space to escape aggressive behaviors."

The shelters must be constructed such that birds have "ready access" to the outdoors throughout the day. For every 360 birds, there must be "one (1) linear foot of exit area space;" this, according to the USDA's calculations, would ensure that no bird has to wait more than an hour to come inside or go outside.

Egg-laying chickens are required to have access to at least one square foot of outdoor space for every 2.25 pounds of bird at the facility; this requirement is calculated per pound, rather than per bird, to account for variations in size between different birds of the same species. Broiler chickens, on the other hand, are to be given a "flat rate" of at least two square feet per bird.

New Organic Requirements for Livestock's Indoor Space & Housing

The new organic standards also require farmers to give animals enough space to stretch their bodies, move around, and engage in their natural behaviors.

The indoor shelters for non-avian livestock state that the animals have to be given enough space "to lie down, stand up, and fully stretch their limbs and allow livestock to express their normal patterns of behavior over a 24-hour period." This is much more specific than the previous version, which only required enough space for "natural maintenance, comfort behaviors and exercise," and made no reference to how often the animals must have access to this space.

The new rules say that animals may be temporarily confined to spaces that don't meet these requirements - for instance, during milking - but only if they also have "complete freedom of movement during significant parts of the day for grazing, loafing, and exhibiting natural social behavior."

For birds, the indoor shelters must be "sufficiently spacious to allow all birds to move freely, stretch both wings simultaneously, stand normally, and engage in natural behaviors," including "dust bathing, scratching, and perching." In addition, although artificial lighting is allowed, birds must be given at least eight hours of continuous darkness every day.

The rules require that egg-laying chickens be given at least six inches of perch space per bird; chickens who are raised for meat, and non-chicken birds that also lay eggs, are exempt from this requirement.

Organic Rules for Livestock's Health Care

Under the new rules, all surgeries to treat disease in livestock must be carried out "in a manner that employs best management practices in order to minimize pain, stress, and suffering" of the animal. This is a significant addition, as the previous rules did not require farmers to do anything to minimize the pain of animals during surgery.

The USDA has a list of approved anesthetics that may be used on animals during surgery; however, if none of those anesthetics are available, producers are required to take alternative steps to ease the animal's pain - even if doing so results in the animals losing their "organic" status.

Banned Practices for Organic Livestock

The following procedures and devices are completely banned under the new rules for organic products:

• Tail docking (cows). This refers to the removal of most or all of a cow's tail.


• Gestation crates and farrowing cages (pigs). These are harshly-confining cages that mother pigs are kept in during pregnancy and after giving birth.


• Induced molting (chickens). Also known as forced molting, this is the practice of depriving chickens of food and/or daylight for up to two weeks in order to temporarily increase their egg output.


• Wattling (cows). This painful procedure involves slicing off chunks of the skin under a cow's neck for identification purposes.


• Toe clipping (chickens). This refers to cutting off a chicken's toes to prevent them from scratching themselves.


• Mulesing (sheep). Another painful procedure, this is when portions of a sheep's hindquarters are cut off in order to reduce the risk of infection.

The new regulations also contain partial bans on other common factory farm practices. They are:

• Debeaking (chickens). This is the practice of cutting off chickens' beaks to prevent them from pecking one another. The new regulations prohibit debeaking in many contexts, but still permit it so long as a) it takes place within the first 10 days of a chick's life, and b) it doesn't involve removing more than one-third of chick's upper beak.


• Tail docking (sheep). While tail docking of cattle is flatly prohibited, sheep's tails may still be docked under the new regulations, but only up to the distal end of the caudal fold.


• Teeth clipping (pigs). This refers to removing the top-third of a pig's needle teeth to prevent them from injuring each other. The new rules state that teeth clipping may not be performed on a routine basis, but is permitted when alternative attempts to reduce infighting have failed.

Do Organizations Other Than the USDA Offer Certification for Animal Products?


Yes. In addition to the USDA, several nonprofit organizations offer their own certifications for ostensibly "humane" food products. Here are a few of them; for a more thorough comparison of how their welfare standards compare to each other, the Animal Welfare Institute has you covered.


Animal Welfare Approved


Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) is a certification granted by the nonprofit A Greener World. Its standards are quite rigorous: all animals must have continuous outdoor pasture access, tail-docking and beak-trimming are prohibited, no animals may be kept in cages and calves must be raised by their mothers, among other requirements.


Over the last century, the chicken industry has selectively bred chickens to grow so abnormally large that many of them can't support their own weight. In an attempt to combat this, AWA standards place a limit on how quickly chickens can grow (no more than 40 grams a day, on average).


Certified Humane


The Certified Humane label is granted by the nonprofit organization Humane Farm Animal Care, which has developed its own specific welfare standards for each of the most commonly farmed animals. Certified Humane standards require that cows have access to the outdoors (but not necessarily pasture), pigs have adequate bedding and access to rooting materials, egg-laying hens have at least one square foot of space per bird, and perhaps most significantly, no animals of any kind are kept in cages.


Note that Certified Humane is not the same as American Humane Certified, a different program that many animal rights activists believe is insufficiently committed to animal welfare at best - and actively deceptive at worst.


GAP-Certified


The Global Animal Partnership, another nonprofit, differs from the other organizations on this list in that it offers a ranked certification program, with products receiving different "grades" depending on which level of standards they adhere to.


Most of GAP's standards focus on what sort of access animals have to pastures, and the organization has many different metrics for assessing this. It also addresses other areas of animal welfare; under GAP standards, cages are prohibited for both pigs and chickens, and beef cows may not be fed any growth hormones of any kind.


How Does 'Organic' Compare With Other Labels?


Animal products are often marketed as being "cage-free," "free-range" or "pasture-raised." All of these terms have different meanings, and some can have multiple meanings depending on the context.


Cage-Free


At least three different organizations offer "cage-free" certification: The USDA, Certified Humane and United Egg Producers (UEP), a trade group. Naturally, all three of them define the term differently; in general, all three prohibit cages, but some are more stringent than others. For instance, the USDA has no minimum space requirements for cage-free chickens, while Certified Humane does.


Additionally, all eggs produced in California are cage-free, thanks to the passage of Proposition 12.


In any event, a lack of cages doesn't necessarily mean these chickens are living happy, healthy lives. There's no requirement that cage-free chickens be given access to the outdoors, for instance, and although the UEP discourages beak-trimming on cage-free farms, it doesn't prohibit it.

Despite these shortcomings, studies have shown that cage-free systems significantly reduce the amount of pain that chickens experience on factory farms.


Free-Range


Under current USDA rules, poultry products can use the label "free-range" if the flock in question was "provided shelter in a building, room, or area with unlimited access to food, fresh water, and continuous access to the outdoors during their production cycle," with the stipulation that outdoor areas can't be fenced in or covered with netting.


Certified Humane's Free-Range standards are more specific, with a requirement that the chickens get at least six hours outdoor access a day and two square feet of outdoor space per bird.


Pasture-Raised


Unlike "cage-free" and "free-range," "pasture-raised" labeling is not regulated by the government at all. If you see a product that's labeled "pasture-raised" without the mention of any third-party certification, it's essentially meaningless.


If a product is Certified Humane Pasture-Raised, however, it means quite a lot - specifically, that every chicken had at least 108 square feet of outdoor space for at least six hours a day.

Meanwhile, all AWA-certified products are pasture-raised, regardless of whether those words appear on the label, as this is a core requirement of their certification.


The Bottom Line


The new USDA Organic regulations do hold organic meat companies to a higher level of animal welfare than non-organic products, and that includes large players like Tyson Foods and Perdue with organic product lines. The new standards aren't quite as high as those of some third-party certifiers, like AWA, and even for the best certifications, how animals are raised in reality depends on the quality of oversight and independent inspectors. Ultimately, "humanewashing" has become a common enough marketing practice that it's easy for even the savviest shoppers to be fooled by unverified or deceptive labeling. The fact that a product is marketed as "humane" doesn't necessarily make it so, and likewise, the fact that a product is marketed as organic also doesn't necessarily mean it's humane.




Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating a bird flu outbreak at an Arkansas broiler operation in Clay County as well as in some backyard flocks across the state.

According to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, close to 230,000 birds have been exposed to the HPAI virus.

Jada Thompson, associate professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Arkansas, said conditions in poultry facilities contribute to the spread of the illness.

"The breeding systems prolong the cost of the disease outbreak and prolongs the replenishment of that system," Thompson explained. "When we start talking about the disease outbreak, it's not even just the direct impact and the biological lag to replenishment, but it's also the multiplicative impact in terms of further upstream on that system."

Since December, birds have tested positive in seven counties across Arkansas including Sharp, Craighead and Lafayette.

As bird flu cases increase across the country, consumers are seeing higher prices at grocery stores. Thompson said the outbreaks also create financial strains for the agriculture industry, forcing companies to adjust their business practices in some cases.

"These practices have to go into place and those are additional costs," Thompson pointed out. "There's additional costs for the monitoring and surveillance, for the cleaning and disinfections. There's additional costs for the testing, and that's going to be to the producer, to the integrator, to the government officials to the testing labs."

The outbreak is being monitored by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, Game and Fish Commission and the Arkansas Department of Public Health.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Imagery is a powerful cornerstone of food marketing — think of a laughing cow on cheese — often playing an outsize role in what consumers ultimately choose to buy. But when it comes to the marketing of meat, dairy and eggs, the branding does not necessarily match reality. Appealing to the emotional part of the brain, visuals are there to tell a story to connect with consumers, not provide transparency about the meat or milk in your cart.

As author, academic and activist Carol J. Adams tells Sentient, “We’re in an image-based world,” and “images accomplish a lot, going around rational minds, right to the emotion.” After all, in the minds of many consumers, how farm animals are raised is important.

Symbols like red barns, rolling green pastures, sunshine and happy animals are common on meat and dairy labels. But how accurate are the most common visual representations? Sentient spoke to Adams, author of the books “The Sexual Politics of Meat,” “The Pornography of Meat,” and others, as well as to Jo-Anne McArthur, photojournalist and founder of We Animals, to compare common tropes in advertising with the reality of industrial animal agriculture today.

 Misleading Advertising Expectation #1: The Traditional Barn

The red or otherwise traditional barn is a prominent symbol used in meat, dairy and egg marketing. Rooted in childhood nursery rhymes, fables and films, the barn helps paint farming as wholesome and idyllic. From “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to “Charlotte’s Web” and “Babe,” we learn at an early age that farms are peaceful places where animals roam freely.

As adults, we find that same barn imagery on labels for meat, dairy and eggs. Adams argues these images are placed to evoke feelings of comfort, familiarity and trust; a powerful marketing tool. “You’d really have to stretch the notion of barn to apply it to these [modern] institutions,” she argues.

McArthur has been to over 60 countries to document agricultural spaces, and says that what she often finds is “that the barns are actually very big warehouses. Gone are the days of the small red barn.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are approximately 74.5 million hogs and pigs at any given time raised on around 56,265 U.S. farms. This means the average building holds over 1,300 animals per farm; not quite a little red barn. The majority of farm animals in the U.S. are housed in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs), which operate “more like factories than farms.”

Misleading Advertising Expectation #2: Green Pastures for All

Another visual commonly utilized in the marketing of meat, dairy and eggs is that of green fields and grassy hills. Sometimes accompanied by bright sunshine, blue skies and blue water, these symbols elicit notions of farming as a natural endeavor.

Agriculture, however depicted, is an entirely human invention developed to feed ourselves more efficiently, not a product of nature. Today, the vast majority of farm animals are raised on factory farms; not on rolling pastures. Space is particularly tight for chickens.

“For the most part, birds who are used to lay eggs don’t ever have access to daylight,” says McArthur. They are kept in windowless warehouses, often with artificial lighting used to manipulate laying cycles. Around 60 percent of hens in the U.S. egg industry are confined to battery cages, the smallest size cages allowed by law. In Canada that number is over 80 percent.

For poultry chickens, also known as broilers, no outdoor access is ever required by USDA standards, unless the label claims “organic” or “free-range,” then outdoor access is mandated by USDA guidelines. On industrial farms — which can house up to 50,000 birds — each chicken is provided as little as 100 square inches each, as per the National Chicken Council’s minimal guidelines.

There are some programs that do require chickens to have “access” to the outdoors, such as Certified Animal Welfare Approved and USDA Organic, but what that means in practice varies. Certified Humane standards, for example, do not require that chickens have access to the outdoors at all, unless specified as “free range” or “pasture raised.”

This limited access to green fields and sunshine is simply not the norm for the majority of egg-laying hens, nor broiler chickens farmed in the U.S.

And as we’ll see with our next piece of misleading advertising, pasture is only the norm for beef cows, and for around four to six months, give or take depending on the farm.

Misleading Advertising Expectation #3: Green, Not Brown

On a label, green tends to connote healthy and natural to consumers. “Green is a positive color, and green fields imply bucolic,” Adams says. Unfortunately, though, the use of the green pastures on meat labels is often not accurate. In fact, the reality is much…browner.

“Where is all the manure?” Adams asks. “Where is the dirty water that comes from these huge manure fields?” In reality, modern farming operations produce immense amounts of waste, around 1.4 billion tons of manure each year. That waste is supposed to be spread onto fields to help crops grow — but the sheer volume of waste coupled with spills from accidents or extreme weather leads to plenty of exceptions.

Manure from agricultural operations is the primary source of phosphorus and nitrogen contamination in surface and groundwater, leading to undrinkable water supply in factory farm frontline communities in states like Iowa and North Carolina.

Beef cattle in the U.S. spend at least some of the first part of their lives on pasture. Over half of them eventually end up in dusty feedlots for fattening, before being sent to slaughter. As of January 2024 in the U.S., there were 14.4 million cows and calves on feedlots.

McArthur has been to industrial feedlots all over the world, including in the U.S. and Canada, and describes them as cramped and dirty spaces, where animals are “not given much room to move, explore or do anything natural.” They are also often slippery, she says, due to the excessive amount of animal waste. “It’s not a place that animals can romp around on.”

Misleading Advertising Expectation #4: Happy Cows and Other Cartoon Animals

Meat, dairy and egg companies that include animals in their branding often use cartoon depictions or simple silhouettes, rather than real images of animals.

This may sound harmless enough, but Adams, who has been called a pioneer of vegan-feminist critical theory, argues there is a more sinister intent behind the tactic. Meat marketers tend to shy away from real images, she says, as “that would perpetuate the lie that animals want to be our food. So they have to rely on different cultural tropes, and the cartoon is one of them. The cartoon sort of liberates them into a bigger lie.”

From her work photographing farmed animals, McArthur adds, “you would be really hard-pressed to find an animal that could be photographed to look pretty [enough for marketing purposes],” she says, “because they are very, very dirty, because they don’t have the ability to clean themselves in these conditions.” She adds that it wouldn’t be possible to “go into a place like this and take a beautiful picture that would make us want to eat these animals.”

The use of cartoons like the “laughing cow” helps perpetuate the image of happy and clean animals, animals who only experience what is often described as “one bad day” by farmers who tout their welfare standards. Again, the vast majority of animals are not raised on such farms.

“There’s a desire [by marketers] to sanitize, to sentimentalize, because the truth is threatening,” says Adams. “Avoiding some language and using a happy cow is a successful way of keeping complacent consumers.”

The Bottom Line

Meat, dairy and egg marketing relies heavily on imagery to shape consumer perceptions, with symbols like red barns and green pastures suggesting idyllic farming conditions. However, the reality is starkly different, with most farm animals confined to industrial, overcrowded environments, far from the serene settings depicted on labels. These carefully crafted visuals mask the grim conditions of factory farms, perpetuating a misleading narrative that sanitizes the true nature of industrial animal agriculture.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Grey Moran for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Mississippi News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

As avian flu rapidly circulates in the U.S., Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s largest egg producer, appears to be having a bumper year, bolstered in part by taxpayer bailouts in the multi-millions.

The company’s stocks recently soared to a record high, as its net sales rose by a staggering 82 percent last quarter. Cal-Maine Foods expanded its operations last spring, paying around $110 million in cash to acquire the assets and facilities of another egg producer, ISE America. Despite culling at least 1.6 million hens on infected farms last year, the poultry corporation is getting richer and bigger

U.S. taxpayers have given the poultry giant a lift. The company has received $44 million in indemnity payouts to compensate for bird deaths tied to the avian flu outbreak. Despite the company’s growth, Cal-Maine Foods is the fourth largest recipient of indemnity payments for the ongoing outbreak from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)’s indemnity program.

The compensation system, distinct from the agency’s program for livestock, pays poultry farmers and producers for the market value of the birds and eggs. It does not pay for birds that directly die from avian flu. It only pays for “infected or exposed poultry and/or eggs that are destroyed to control the disease,” — i.e. deliberately killed to prevent the spread of the virus. The agency also provides compensation for other virus control activities, such as destroying contaminated supplies and disinfecting a barn after an outbreak.

Nearly three years since the first H5N1 outbreak in U.S. poultry, the USDA has concluded that the agency’s compensation system has not worked as it intended. By bailing out poultry producers with few stipulations, the system has, inadvertently, lowered the economic risk of biosecurity lapses on farms, encouraging the virus’s spread. In other words, farmers have not been effectively incentivized to make changes to protect their flocks.

As the outbreak has continued to spread, the government bailout of the poultry industry has ballooned too. As of January 22nd, 2025, APHIS has doled out $1.46 billion in indemnity payments and additional compensation over the outbreak’s course, according to a figure provided to Sentient by a USDA spokesperson. This includes $1.138 billion for the loss of culled eggs and birds and $326 million for measures to prevent the virus’s spread.

A significant share — $301 million — of the indemnity payments have gone to just the top four producers, according to government spending data.

Jennie-O Turkey Store, based in Minnesota, tops the list for indemnity payouts: the popular turkey brand has received $120 million since the beginning of the H5N1 outbreak in 2022, according to government spending data. Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch, which supplies McDonald’s cage-free eggs, has received the second largest bailout at $89 million. Center Fresh Egg Farm, part of a group of farms owned by Versova, one of the largest U.S. egg producers, has received $46 million. (This data reflects the legally obligated amount of indemnity owed to each company, which means that the USDA may not have dispensed these payments in full yet.)

By comparison, when the first outbreak of avian flu swept the U.S. between 2014 and 2015, farmers and producers received just over $200 million in indemnity payments.

“The current regulations do not provide a sufficient incentive for producers in control areas or buffer zones to maintain biosecurity throughout an outbreak,” APHIS stated in December, which introduced new emergency guidelines in an attempt to remedy this incentive problem. 

One of the preferred methods farms use to cull birds is by sealing off the air flow to the barn and then pumping in heat or carbon dioxide. Known as Ventilation Shutdown Plus (VSD+), this is a cheap way to kill an entire flock by heat stroke or suffocation, and is approved by the USDA for indemnity payments only under “constrained circumstances.” The top 10 recipients of indemnity payments all used VSD+ to often exterminate millions of birds at once, according to APHIS records obtained by Crystal Heath, a veterinarian and the executive director of Our Honor, through a FOIA request.

By compensating farmers for VSD+, this system has helped make what many animal welfare advocates consider an unnecessarily cruel death part of the industry standard.

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) recently released a draft of new guidelines for depopulation, which notes when the heat fails, VSD+ can result in an “unacceptable numbers of survivors” — birds that are severely injured, but not yet dead, and then need to be killed by another means. Yet the AVMA’s draft guidelines, closely relied upon by the USDA, still include this method as an option.

Some animal protection advocates contend that poultry companies should not receive indemnity payments at all, regardless of biosecurity, arguing that the industry should be responsible for its own losses.

“Why should this high-risk business be bailed out?” Heath, a longtime critic of AVMA’s guidelines, tells Sentient. As an animal protection advocate, Heath has also been closely tracking indemnity payments throughout this outbreak. “What we’re seeing is the largest corporations are receiving the most in indemnity payments, and they’re using the most brutal methods of depopulation,” referring to the culling methods.

The bailout is set to only expand as H5N1 spreads, prompting the mass culling of more domestic flocks, in what has become the largest foreign animal disease outbreak in U.S. history. The egg industry continues to be roiled: over 20 million egg–laying chickens died from either culling or the virus in the final quarter of last year.

More recently, on January 17, 2025, HPAI was detected for the first time in a commercial poultry flock in Georgia, the top producer of poultry in the U.S., deepening concerns about the struggle to contain the prolonged outbreak.

Too Indemnified to Fail: How Payments Can Incentivize Risk

The indemnity system was designed to incentivize producers to adopt practices that help curb the spread of the virus. As APHIS states, the payments are intended to “encourage prompt reporting of certain high consequence livestock and poultry diseases and to incentivize private biosecurity investment.” Biosecurity measures include a range of practices to prevent disease outbreaks, from latching dumpster lids and disinfecting equipment to more expensive measures, like installing netting and screens on barns to deter wild birds.

These biosecurity measures are especially critical given that H5N1 is most commonly introduced to poultry flocks through wild birds, according to a 2023 epidemiology analysis conducted by APHIS. The virus’s transmission from wild birds can happen either directly, or indirectly through contaminated feed, clothing and equipment.

By sheltering producers from risk, researchers have observed that indemnity payouts can, under some circumstances, inadvertently encourage lapses in biosecurity, enabling the spread of disease. And this can potentially create a system where farms are too indemnified to fail — the risks of operating a business highly susceptible to disease are absorbed by the government.

“What we are finding is that ‘unconditional indemnity’ disincentivizes livestock producers to adopt biosecurity because they know that if the disease strikes their system then they would be indemnified,” Asim Zia, a professor of public policy and computer science at the University of Vermont who researches livestock disease risk, tells Sentient. According to Zia, “unconditional indemnity” means indemnity payments with next-to-no requirements to qualify.

It remains to be seen whether APHIS’s new interim guidelines — which will require that some high-risk producers successfully pass a biosecurity audit prior to receiving indemnity — will be enough to remedy this issue and encourage producers to change. Unlike the previous system, the new audits will include a visual inspection of the premises, either virtually or in-person. However, the scope of the new rule is limited to large-scale commercial poultry facilities that have been previously infected with HPAI, or that are moving poultry onto a poultry farm in a “buffer zone,” a higher-risk region.

Other large-scale commercial facilities will still follow the earlier rule’s more lenient audit process. This requires an audit of a producers’ biosecurity plan on paper — not an inspection of the actual poultry farm — every two years. It has been remarkably easy for farmers to pass this audit: the failure rate of this program was zero, according to APHIS, which made it so there were effectively no strings attached to the payouts. And smaller-scale poultry operations are entirely off the hook, exempt from both rules, and even from developing a biosecurity plan.

In the past, APHIS has repeatedly bailed out many of the same poultry businesses, spending $227 million on indemnity payments to farms that have been infected with H5N1 multiple times. This has included 67 poultry businesses that have been affected at least twice, and 19 companies that have been infected at least three times, according to the agency’s own records.

APHIS has not released the names of the companies that have been repeatedly infected, though the indemnity payments provide a glimpse into this.

Take Cal-Maine Foods’ poultry farm in Farewell, Texas. On April 2, 2024, Texas’s Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller announced its flock tested positive for H5N1, requiring the culling of 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets. The very next day Cal-Maine Foods, headquartered in Mississippi, received an indemnity payment of $17 million for HPAI detected on the Texas operation, according to government spending data.

The Poultry Industry’s Risky Expansion

Last November, Cal-Maine Foods’ executives joined other business leaders across industries at an annual investment conference, ringing in the year on an optimistic note. As avian flu decimated flocks, the company’s top executives were focused on the future.

“We still think there’s going to be good opportunity to grow,” Max Bowman, Cal-Maine Foods’ vice president and CFO, told business leaders. “We got a playbook for the whole market. And so right now, things are great, but we think we can continue to build this company,” which, as it stands, controls one-fifth of the domestic egg market in the U.S.

The company is already in the process of building five new cage-free facilities, adding 1 million hens to their flock, in Florida, Georgia, Utah and Texas.

Bowman, Cal-Maine’s Vice President, did not reply to Sentient’s request for comment.

Other poultry companies are expanding too. For instance, Demler Farms in San Jacinto, California is building a triple-story egg operation right next to a dairy farm, which is also susceptible to the avian flu now that it has spread to cattle. Adding to this risk, the San Jacinto Valley is a critical habitat for migratory water birds, the primary hosts of avian flu.

Most of California’s cases of avian flu in poultry have been clustered along this water bird migratory route, known as the Pacific Flyway. Yet this appears to not be enough of a deterrent for Demler Farms’ expansion. As Heath observed, this risk is softened by the indemnity payment system, ready to bail out infected poultry farms by the millions.


Grey Moran wrote this article for Sentient.


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