By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Donald Trump is in the process of filling out his second-term cabinet, and he recently announced appointees to lead the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Health And Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Trump’s recent cabinet appointments have the potential to significantly change food systems in America — but how?

Laura Fox, environmental lawyer and research scholar at Yale Law School, tells Sentient that we can expect “deregulation, lax enforcement, reduced oversight and de-emphasization or even denial of certain frameworks, such as climate change,” from the incoming appointees.

“Those are things that I think we can anticipate seeing across the board that will have huge negative impacts on food systems and agriculture,” Fox says. “Environmental justice issues are going to take a back seat, or just be ignored, in these agencies’ decisions.”

Will Trump’s Appointees Do Whatever He Wants?

It’s worth pointing out at the top that, although Trump’s appointees are individuals with their own viewpoints, cabinet secretaries generally do what the president wants them to do. They do have discretion and a degree of autonomy, but in practice, agency heads operate largely as functionaries to carry out the president’s agenda, not individual actors implementing their own favored policies.

There are exceptions to this, of course. In 2017, Trump became outraged with his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, after Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department’s Russia probe without first consulting the president. But this is the exception that proves the rule; for his second term, Trump has appointed a staunch loyalist to head the Justice Department, not a senator to whom he has no personal ties.

Similarly, Trump’s picks to head the USDA, EPA and HHS are likely to implement his larger policy agenda, regardless of their own personal views. There have already been some small signs of this acquiescence: Trump’s HHS appointee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once an outspoken opponent of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, but stopped mentioning the chemical after allying himself with Trump, whose former EPA head Scott Pruitt thwarted a ban on the pesticide during Trump’s first term.

Nevertheless, it’s still worth looking at who each of these folks are, and what their appointments might mean for animals and food systems in America.

United States Department of Agriculture: Brooke Rollins

Nominated to lead the USDA is Brooke Rollins, a conservative attorney who has served in a number of policy-oriented positions over the last few decades. In Texas, she served as former Gov. Rick Perry’s policy director, and later led the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Rollins held several White House positions during Trump’s first term, including Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives and Director of the Office of American Innovation. She currently leads the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a Trump-aligned think tank.

Rollins has some personal history in agriculture, as she grew up on a farm and got her undergraduate degree in agricultural leadership and development. She doesn’t appear to have any professional experience in the sector, though, and aside from her vocal opposition to Chinese ownership of American farmland, Rollins’ views on agricultural issues are largely unknown.

Given her longtime involvement in conservative politics, however, she likely shares the same general positions on agricultural and food issues as most Republicans — that is, skepticism of climate-focused initiatives, support for crop subsidies, a desire to cut SNAP funding and a general opposition to regulations.

Environmental Protection Agency: Rep. Lee Zeldin

To lead the EPA, Trump has nominated Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican. Zeldin is most known for his 2022 run for New York governor; although he lost, it was the closest New York gubernatorial race in nearly 30 years, and his respectable showing made Zeldin something of a rising star in the Republican Party.

Like Rollins, Zeldin has little apparent background in the policy area over which Trump is giving him control. His background is in the military, and during his eight years in Congress, Zeldin didn’t sit on any subcommittees relating to the environment.

Zeldin’s voting record on environmental legislation earned him a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, suggesting a hostile attitude toward regulatory efforts to protect the environment. In a 2014 interview, he questioned the urgency of climate change. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are,” he told Newsday. More recently, he spoke of his desire to “roll back regulations that are forcing businesses [to] struggle” after Trump announced his nomination.

Department of Health and Human Services: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Trump has tapped attorney and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the HHS. Kennedy was once a respected environmental lawyer, but has since fallen out of favor with many environmentalists due to his increasingly controversial views, which include opposing offshore wind energy and incorrectly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Kennedy has many opinions about many topics, but plenty of them will fall outside his jurisdiction as HHS secretary. For instance, he’s spoken out against various pesticides and advocates frequently for organic foods — but pesticides are regulated by the EPA, and organic food by the USDA, so he won’t have much power over these areas if he’s confirmed as HHS secretary.

How Trump’s Appointees Could Affect Food Systems

Let’s take a look at a few ways in which these three appointees might have an impact on food and animals in the United States.

Failing to Regulate Pollution from Factory Farms

Although food systems generally don’t fall under the EPA’s jurisdiction, Zeldin’s pro-business stance could nevertheless have an impact on what we eat and drink. As part of its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, the EPA regulates waste and water discharges from factory farms, and the agency is currently in the midst of re-evaluating whether these regulations are sufficient.

This study hasn’t been completed yet, but once it is, the EPA will decide whether to impose more regulations on these discharges. Zeldin’s affinity for deregulation suggests that he won’t be inclined to implement additional restrictions on factory farm pollution, even if the agency’s study suggests that they’re necessary. Such a decision would, in turn, stall efforts to make American drinking water safer — which was the point of the study in the first place.

Similarly, Fox tells Sentient that Zeldin is unlikely to crack down on other kinds of pollution from factory farms, specifically methane.

“The EPA has not done much on regulating methane emissions from large animal feeding operations, and we don’t see that happening under a Zeldin administration at all,” Fox says. “I don’t think it’s unique to Zeldin. I imagine any of the Republican appointees are likely to de-emphasize or deny the impacts of climate change.”

Changing School Lunches & Dietary Guidelines for Americans

One tool Kennedy and Rollins would have for influencing American food systems is the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Written jointly by the USDA and the HHS and updated every five years, this is a lengthy compilation of dietary recommendations that guides federal food purchases and other programs involving food.

One such program is the National School Lunches Program (NSLP). The USDA administers the NSLP, and by law, the lunches themselves must adhere to the DGA’s general guidance (although the USDA has some wiggle room when it comes to interpreting these recommendations, as we’ll see).

In total, the DGA influences over $80 billion in federal spending every year, and as heads of the USDA and HHS, Rollins and Kennedy would both have a major say over what’s included in the next version of the document. This, in turn, would give them indirect influence over how a number of federal food programs operate.

For instance, Kennedy is a longtime opponent of ultra-processed foods, and has said that he wants them out of school lunches “immediately.” As head of HHS, Kennedy wouldn’t have any direct say over the school lunches program — but he would have direct say over what’s in the next edition of the DGA.

“USDA is required by statute to update child nutrition meal patterns to conform with the latest DGA, which they do every five years,“ Chloe Waterman, senior program manager at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth, tells Sentient. “Kennedy could theoretically push for limits on ultra-processed foods in the 2025-2030 DGA, which could — again, in theory, and in another five years from now — translate to USDA issuing child nutrition meal patterns that limit ultra-processed foods.”

Project 2025, the lengthy book of policy recommendations prepared by Trump allies prior to his election, recommended abolishing the DGA entirely, ostensibly because “issues such as climate change and sustainability [have] infiltrated” the guidelines, which are officially meant to cover personal health, not planetary health.

This is a misrepresentation, however, as the guidelines do not take climate or sustainability into account. This possibility was floated in 2015 during preliminary meetings about the DGA, but Congress immediately shot down the idea, and passed legislation that actively forbids the document from taking anything into consideration other than personal health and nutrition.

In any event, the USDA and HHS are required by law to publish a DGA every five years, so eliminating the guidelines entirely would require Congressional action. But simply changing what the guidelines say would not.

Cutting SNAP Funding

The USDA is also in charge of SNAP, the federal food stamps program. While SNAP is funded by Congress through the Farm Bill, the actual benefit amounts themselves are determined by something called the Thrifty Food Plan. This is essentially the USDA’s guide for eating healthfully on a limited budget, and it’s written in accordance with the DGA’s recommendations.

This means that any changes Rollins or Kennedy make to the DGA would also influence how much money food stamps recipients receive. It’s difficult to game things out beyond that, as it would depend on what specific changes they make to the DGA — and whether these changes promote foods that are more or less expensive than current SNAP benefits allow for.

Congressional Republicans have proposed changes to the SNAP program that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would effectively cut SNAP payments by $30 billion over the next decade. While this effort is taking place in Congress, where Rollins has no authority, it’s still a good indicator of where Republican Party officials stand on the issue of food stamps: they want to cut them.

Lifting Restrictions on Raw Milk

As HHS chief, Kennedy would be in charge of several other agencies as well, including the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA, which Kennedy has accused of waging a “war on public health,” regulates interstate distribution and sale of raw milk — and Kennedy is a fan of raw milk.

He shouldn’t be, as raw milk is not safe for human consumption and can even facilitate the spread of zoonotic diseases like avian flu. Nevertheless, Kennedy could lift the FDA’s (modest) restrictions on unpasteurized milk sales, making it easier for raw milk fans to find, purchase and consume the dangerous beverage, which recently gave 171 people salmonella.

Deregulating Pesticides

How exactly the second Trump administration will handle pesticides is a bit of a mystery. On the one hand, Trump has elevated and heaped praise upon Kennedy, who is broadly in favor of additional pesticide regulations; on the other hand, Trump’s first administration deregulated pesticides.

Regardless, the EPA is in charge of pesticide regulation in the U.S., so this responsibility would fall to Zeldin, not Kennedy. While Zeldin’s views on pesticides are anybody’s guess, he shares the Republican Party’s general loathing of regulations, and both progressives and conservatives expect him to pursue an agenda of deregulation as EPA chief, which could include easing regulations on pesticides.

Lax Enforcement of Animal Welfare Standards

Fox tells Sentient that she expects Rollins — ”and probably anybody that’s going to be coming into USDA in this administration” — to pursue deregulatory policies that will hurt animals and humans alike.

“We’re going to see deregulation, which affects animal welfare standards and treatment of animals at production facilities,” Fox says. “Likely, policies that will increase slaughterhouse line speeds, which then risk worker safety, food safety and animal welfare.”

She also suspects that under Rollins, inspection duties at slaughterhouses will be increasingly privatized.

“Right now, we have federal employees looking at violations of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and under the first Trump administration, they had proposed allowing facility employees to do that function [instead],” Fox explains. “So I imagine that’s going to continue, which could lead to fewer enforcement actions against humane handling violations.”

Supporting Agricultural Subsidies

Every year, the U.S. government hands out over $30 billion in subsidies to agricultural producers, and the USDA is in charge of distributing this money. This is another area in which Rollins, as USDA chief, could conceivably have some influence.

While Republicans and Democrats sometimes bicker about the details from time to time, farm subsidies themselves are generally supported by both major parties. There’s no significant movement within the GOP to eliminate or significantly reduce farm subsidies, which isn’t the case with many other federal spending programs.

In fact, during the last Republican administration, the USDA actually increased farm subsidy payments by a significant margin. It did this in response to Trump’s trade war with China, which caused the value of U.S. farm exports — and thus profits for U.S. agricultural producers — to plummet.

With Trump pledging even more tariffs on day one of his second term, it seems highly possible that the USDA, under Rollins’ guidance, could again increase farm subsidies to stave off financial disaster in the U.S. farming sector.

The Bottom Line

It’s worth keeping in mind that none of these appointments are a sure thing just yet, as all three nominees will need to be confirmed by the Senate. Incoming presidents generally don’t have too hard of a time getting their cabinets confirmed, but it’s entirely possible that some combination of Rollins, Kennedy and Zeldin won’t win confirmation.

If they do, though, our food systems could undergo some serious changes. Exactly what those changes will look like remains to be seen, but it’s fair to say that in general, they’ll likely prioritize business interests and profits over environmental welfare, food safety and personal health.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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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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An animal activist is speaking out ahead of her trial in May - accused of trespassing, theft and conspiracy after a protest at a poultry slaughterhouse in Northern California.

Zoe Rosenberg, 22, is charged with one felony and four misdemeanors for removing four birds from Perdue's Petaluma Poultry in June 2023, and part of a group of protesters with the Berkeley-based animal rights organization Direct Action Everywhere.

"I believe that the necessity doctrine applies to non-human animals when they are in situations where they're facing life-threatening abuse or neglect, as these chickens were," Rosenberg contended. "And so, I believe that my actions were legal and necessary."

Perdue did not respond to a request for comment. The Sonoma County District Attorney's office says no city or county agencies have referred a case requesting criminal charges against the poultry operation.

Direct Action Everywhere's investigation reported multiple alleged abuses, including chickens found starving, unable to walk to the feeding station.

Rosenberg said she's disappointed that she's facing charges - but not Perdue.

"Rampant routine criminal animal cruelty was documented, including chickens suffering from disease and neglect, being left to slowly die, and evidence at the slaughterhouse was found that birds were being boiled alive," she continued. "Evidence of this misconduct was repeatedly reported to Sonoma County law enforcement and other law enforcement officials in California, and no action was taken."

Rosenberg was ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor while awaiting trial. She faces up to 5.5 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Charges were dropped against one other activist.