Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is calling on the Trump administration to expedite its response to the spread of H5N1 bird flu.
The Buckeye state has seen more than 15 million of its commercial poultry birds killed since December due to exposure to the virus, the Republican pointed out.
“One of the things that is clear is that the federal government is really going to have to accelerate the research that is being done in regard to bird flu,” DeWine told reporters Thursday following a meeting with agricultural leaders in Darke County, according to the Dayton Daily News. “...One of the messages that I heard today (during the meeting) was, ‘Please do everything you can to speed that up.’”
The governor said he would be speaking with newly confirmed Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who has said that the administration’s plan to respond to the threat would take months, with already incredibly high egg prices expected to soar even higher.
“This five-point strategy won’t erase the problem overnight, but we’re confident that it will restore stability to the egg market over the next three to six months. This approach will also ensure stability over the next four years and beyond,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote in an op-ed published last month in The Wall Street Journal.
The plan allocates $1 billion toward the fight, which includes providing $500 million to expand biosecurity, increasing relief to aid farmers to the tune of $400 million, removing “regulatory burdens” on the industry, exploring vaccine strategies for chickens and having eggs sent to the U.S. from abroad.
“There is no short-term fix. If there were, it would have been addressed under the last administration,” Rollins previously told CBS News.
Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said federal health agencies oppose the use of bird flu vaccines in poultry right now.
"There's no indication that those vaccines actually provide sterilizing immunity and all three of my health agencies, NIH, CDC, and FDA, the acting heads of those agencies have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine," Kennedy reportedly told Fox News.
But without vaccines and relief from spread, farmers are worried they’re losing the fight against the virus.
"I call this virus a terrorist," Greg Herbruck, the CEO of the California-based Herbruck's Poultry Ranch, told NPR last month. He had to cull millions of his birds. "And we are in a battle and losing, at the moment."
There have been 70 human cases confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one death in Louisiana. More than 166 million poultry birds have been impacted by bird flu since February 2022.
In Ohio, farmers in five counties have reported flu cases in their flocks this year, according to the Ohio Capital Journal. The state reported its first probable human case in a Mercer County farm worker in mid-February.
Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Brian Baldridge said over 30 percent of layer birds in Ohio have been depopulated, according to WYSO.
“For some time, the farmers who raise poultry in this part of the state — and this is the center in the state of Ohio for the production of eggs — have really suffered tremendous losses," DeWine said.
