U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump’s administration will be focusing its egg price reduction efforts on repopulation of chickens and on biosecurity measures, and that the administration is now ruling out any vaccines for animals against avian bird flu.
Rollins, who spoke with Breitbart News Wednesday evening after Trump’s huge address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, broke down key planks of the administration’s billion-dollar plan to combat egg price hikes. Trump mentioned Rollins and egg prices during his address on Tuesday evening, and put the blame squarely on former President Joe Biden’s administration for the price spiraling out of control.
Rollins, in reaction to that, told Breitbart News that Trump is exactly right that Biden is to blame, because Biden’s top advisers knew about this problem for years and did not take substantive steps to address it.
“The president last night at the State of the Union, I was in his line of sight so that was perhaps part of it, but he sort of mentioned me and talked about some of the key issues we’re working on. Clearly, the price of groceries is a big one. He said ‘We got to get it done’ and I said ‘Yes sir.’ That’s why last week as you know we had the five different pieces of the plan, and it’s bold. The Biden administration, we have been looking at some different things they did where they recognized this as a massive problem for the food supply chain, for poultry producers, for egg-layers, et cetera, but they never did anything about it. This has been going on now for two years. So it isn’t just regulation and all of the cost input increases and overregulation from the Biden administration, but it’s also not completely addressing the avian bird flu a couple years ago when it first hit. Now, we are having to deal with it.”
Rollins then referenced the $1 billion plan the USDA announced last week to combat egg price surges, and noted the first two key planks of it are biosecurity and repopulation of the chickens that the Biden administration killed off. She said the third and fourth planks of the plan are to deregulate the industry to make repopulation and biosecurity measures happen more quickly, and then to import eggs from other countries.
“So when we rolled that out, the first of course was biosecurity,” Rollins said. “The second was the repopulation really working so we don’t have to kill 160 million chickens, which is basically what happened in the last two years. The third is the deregulation and we talked about it and it isn’t just things specific to the avian bird flu but it’s also line speed in some of the plants, it’s Prop 12 out of California which has been devastating—the crazy kind of radical rules out of California have been affecting all of the industry and the country—and the fourth piece of that is we’re going to be importing some eggs. I know we announced Turkey, we’re going to be importing eggs from there and we have actually since last week with the announcement of the plan are in discussions with some other countries. I don’t want to say who they are just yet because we’re close to a deal, but we’re very close to getting more eggs into the country and onto shelves.”
The fifth plank of the plan, though, was the exploration of possible vaccines of livestock like chickens or cattle against the avian flu. But Rollins told Breitbart News that as she has learned more about such proposals, this will not be an effective way to deal with the issue—and ruled it out as a possibility, saying “I pulled that off the table” upon learning how ineffective such vaccines have been in other nations like Mexico.
“The fifth one, that has perhaps taken a little bit more of the space than I had assumed was the vaccine piece,” Rollins said. “The idea was that, initially before I rolled the plan out, the thought was maybe the vaccine is the solution here and that maybe we need to stick a couple hundred million chickens with vaccines so we could potentially move out of this crisis quicker. But what I learned is that looking at countries like Mexico that actually do vaccinate their egg-layers is that those chickens have to be stuck three or four or five times with those vaccine shots and then 80 to 83 percent of those chickens still get the avian bird flu. So I pulled that off the table and for a lot of reasons we are not going to be moving off the table on mandatory vaccines now or frankly ever. So putting that money into the research into making sure it’s effective and safe and in my conversations with the NIH and the CDC and others there are some real concerns on the vaccine side. One of my favorite and it sort of affected me significantly was Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska who is a fifth-generation farmer and is also a veterinarian, he said to me ‘Brooke, don’t ever forget, the virus always wins.’ I think that’s what we’re seeing. So that’s been an interesting piece of this, and I think the research on therapeutics is going to be very important perhaps pivoting away from a vaccine if necessary. And one other thing that has been falsely reported in the news is that the USDA approved a dairy cattle vaccine for the avian bird flu and that just was wrong. I think that has just moved into the process, but that won’t even get to my desk for another year or so. So a lot has to be done there, but also if at all possible the goal would be to move away from that as the answer.”
Rollins elaborated in a followup answer saying that “absolutely not,” the vaccine will never be mandated for livestock, and any voluntary consideration of any such vaccines is at least a year away, probably longer if it is ever considered.
“Right now, the answer is absolutely not based on all of the research,” Rollins said. “I’ve visited an avian flu research facility last week. I’m going to another one next week in Georgia. I’m in constant contact with our veterinarians and our state Ag Commissioners. It seems like a very simple and easy and quick answer but ultimately the repercussions that we don’t fully understand could be so significant that we just have to go in a different direction. So again I think there is some misinformation out there, and mis-reporting, that USDA is somehow moving at light speed toward a vaccine of dairy cattle and egg-layers but the 100 percent answer to that is no, it’s not true, and we have a tremendous amount of work to do before we would even consider that as a potential solution and that is at least a year or more away.”
Rollins said the immediate solution to this crisis is biosecurity measures at farms. When asked to explain what those measures look like, she pointed to pilot programs at farms nationwide that secure them from wild fowl carrying the virus.
“The avian flu is extremely pathogenic—pathogenic is the right word for it. It’s transmitted through wild fowl,” Rollins said. “So let’s say a wild goose flies over your egg-laying barn, and then defecates—then someone steps in that and then walks into the barn. All of a sudden you’ve got an avian flu case that is so—it spreads like wildfire. So once the barns though are locked down with proper ventilation, the roofs are patched, the walls are put up, then you’ve significantly decreased your chances of having any of that in your barn. That allows you to keep laying the eggs and keep feeding your state, the country, and the world frankly. When we say biosecurity, that’s what we mean—locking the barns down, patching the holes, making sure the fowl don’t get in, but also looking potentially at how we breed chickens to have stronger immune systems so that maybe the ones that aren’t getting sick instead of killing the whole herd so we can potentially do something. We do have some farmers out there right now that are piloting that. Instead of mass culling and the USDA basically telling you to put your whole barn down, how can we be creative and innovative in solving this big issue right now?”
While biosecurity measures are the immediate pressing issue to combat avian bird flu, the long term solution here Rollins said is repopulating the chickens the Biden administration killed off.
“I think that’s right, and I think the idea that the mass culling that went on is devastating,” she said when asked if she thinks the long-term solution here is fully repopulating the chickens. “There’s a narrative out there about the indemnification and that they were incentivizing chicken farmers to kill their flocks. I know that’s not true, but I also know that we have got to be extremely purposeful in how we’re moving forward. I think one of the most promising things honestly is the biosecurity. We had 150 pilot projects that went in and said okay if we do audits, we lock the barns down, we pay for up to 75 percent of that locking down, of the 150 pilot projects only one has had a case of the avian flu hit them since those barns were secured. So that’s one big piece of this, but it’s tied to your point that repopulation and getting regulations lifted so we can repopulate almost immediately so we can get these egg-layers laying again, that is the long-term solution.”
Shifting gears, Rollins also had high praise for Trump’s address to the joint session Congress—and ripped Democrats there for being out of touch by behaving the way they did.
“Last night was a full circle moment that included the recognition that we are literally living in a miracle—a miracle that President Trump survived a bullet to the head, a miracle that he survived facing a thousand years in prison, facing a justice system that had been completely weaponized against him, a miracle that not only did he win every swing state but he won the popular vote, and you think about the 20 million illegal aliens that have crossed our border every month over the last four years until a month ago, and the effort to get them registered to vote and the effort to continue to cheat on the other side and the idea of his effort of ‘Too Big to Rig,’ which I think a lot of people laughed about, but he was 100 percent right,” Rollins said. “It was a miracle. Sitting in that room, walking down the aisle, I tried to shake hands with—all of your friends on the right are literally on the right. I was shaking hands on the right and then I’d turn to the left and no one really wanted to shake my hand so by the end I was shaking all to the right. But I have been to multiple State of the Union addresses. When I was in President Trump’s first West Wing as a staffer, I stood in the room and was able to absorb it. It’s an incredible sort of lesson in history frankly, and when you think about all those that went ahead of you. But at the same time I have never seen such a sullen, discouraged, deflated group—dark group of men and women—as I saw when I was walking down the aisle on the left of the hall last night and I thought even in the other days when I was here last time they would at least be friendly and at least try to pretend like they were excited to hear what the president had to say, every now and then stand up and clap. But I’m telling you, I was in the front row, so I had a direct line of vision to every single elected Democrat sitting on the floor of the House. And it was shocking to see them hold their silly signs up, shake their heads, and not stand up. How do you not stand up for Laken Riley’s family? Their daughter was murdered. I just don’t understand how you don’t stand up for Jocelyn’s family from Houston? Their 13-year-old daughter was murdered? How do you not stand up for the 13-year-old survivor of cancer who was made an honorary member of the Secret Service? How do you not stand up for the kid who got into West Point and who against all odds is now going to give his life to the future of the country? It is stunning and I think that hopefully for the good of the country they realize that was a tremendous mistake and at some point they realize the American people are not going to tolerate that. They want us to work together and they want us to celebrate and honor those who deserve celebration and honors—not just on the Republican side but the average Democrat voter wants that too.”
Rollins also told Breitbart News that when it comes to the trade fights and tariff wars ongoing right now, that Trump has farmers in his heart as he negotiates with world leaders on behalf of the United States.
“Let me just add since trade is such a big deal right now that the president is clearly using tariffs as an effective tool,” Rollins said. “He is hyper focused and passionately involved himself on the phone with some of the leaders from the other countries. For me personally, as the Secretary of Agriculture, I have been so encouraged at how he is leaning in and fighting for our farmers, our ranchers, and entire agriculture community. I know it’s a time of unpredictability in an industry where the markets are so thin right now. I understand why they’re concerned. But I believe in this president’s vision and in his leadership. I am ensuring that he knows where the farmers are in this, and I think we’re really going to be able to make some pretty amazing moves for our farming community moving forward.”
