Rose Acre Farms absent from recent USDA avian flu relief payments
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about the USA spending database.
Shortly before Christmas in 2023, the nation’s largest egg producer, Cal-Maine, shut down production at one of its plants in Kansas due to an outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Within three weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave Mississippi-based Cal-Maine around $22 million in relief for the approximately 600,000 hens culled by the virus.
A few months later in April 2024, the avian flu hit a Cal-Maine facility in Texas leading to the death of 1.6 million birds. Again, the USDA quickly gave the company another $21 million to compensate for the loss of the birds and eggs.
Cal-Maine hasn’t been the only large egg producer to get relief, or indemnity, payments from the USDA when their flocks were thinned out by the avian flu.
Since 2015, the USDA has doled out tens of millions of dollars in relief payments for companies that have reported avian major avian flu outbreaks, according to federal spending data. In addition to Cal-Maine, Hillandale Farms has received $53 million and Versova Holdings—which includes subsidiaries Center Fresh Farms, Centrum Valley Farms and Trillium Farms—has received over $100 million in the last decade.
Notably absent from the list as of April 18 is Indiana-based Rose Acre Farms which saw an outbreak at its facility in Seymour this past January. Rose Acre is the second-largest egg producer in the country and the recent outbreak led to the depopulating of 2.6 million birds.
Why Rose Acre hasn’t received any avian flu relief payments from its most recent outbreak when many other major egg producers have is unclear.
A Rose Acre spokesperson told Inside Indiana Business the company’s CEO Tony Wesner wasn’t interested in talking to reporters about why the company hadn’t received a relief payment for the January outbreak.
Wesner recently testified before Congress on the importance of vaccinating hens to help prevent the spread of the HPAI. He told lawmakers Rose Acre has lost 10 million hens to the virus in the last decade, including 1.5 million chickens in an outbreak in 2015.
A USDA spokesperson declined to comment on individual companies but said the federal government’s spending database does not appear to be fully updated regarding indemnity payments.
The database shows the USDA sent Rose Acre Farms a little over $11 million in 2015 for the outbreak that year.
The USDA has said it provides relief payments to encourage farms to report avian flu cases, making it easier to quarantine and stop further spread of the virus. The USDA says the payments cover the costs of chickens and eggs that are destroyed as a result of the virus, it doesn’t cover cleanup or repopulating costs.
In the fall of 2024, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service added an extra requirement before producers can get indemnity payments. The interim rule requires farms to pass a biosecurity audit in order to receive indemnity payments. Previously the agency required farms submit written plans.
Since 2022, indemnity payments have ballooned to over $1.4 billion. And more aid could be on the way.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in February announced a $1 billion plan to combat HPAI, which could include $400 million in relief for farmers combined with a rise in compensation from $7 a chicken to $17.
The indemnity payments are leading to record profits for egg companies even as those companies raise prices. Reporting from The Washington Post shows Cal-Maine averaged quarterly profits of $5 million prior to their farms being affected by the avian flu. In January, the company announced a second-quarter profit of $219 million.