Big Farms Breed Big Flu: End the Cage Age for a Healthier, Affordable Path to Food Security

The industry’s reliance on mass culling, vaccines and “biosecurity measures” fails to address the root cause of so many food safety and food security crises: an unnatural, high-stress, squalid system.

Egg laying hens in battery cages. Photo credit: Compassion In World Farming

The foundation of good health is simple: Wholesome food, fresh air, physical movement and low stress. Yet, these fundamental principles are absent in modern food production.

Animal factories—industrial-scale factory farm livestock operations—create ideal conditions for the emergence and rapid spread of disease, including avian flu.

High-density confinement, genetic uniformity, and poor air quality weaken birds’ immune systems and enable viruses to mutate and transmit quickly.

Unlike in natural settings, where biodiversity and space act as buffers against disease, factory farms concentrate thousands or even millions of animals in close quarters, amplifying viral loads and increasing the risk of spillover to wild birds and even humans.

The industry’s reliance on mass culling, vaccines, and “biosecurity measures” fails to address the root cause of so many food safety and food security crises: an unnatural, high-stress system that prioritizes profit over resilience.

Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s egg crisis, resulting in soaring prices, plummeting availability, and over 120 million chickens killed due to avian flu scares.

Under current protocols, if just one bird in a 100,000-strong confined flock (yes, that’s how many can be in one building!) is suspected of infection, the entire flock is exterminated.

Farm animals have zero legal protections under the Animal Welfare Act. That may not concern some people, but the next time you bite into chicken, consider the following:

The vast majority of animals raised for food in the U.S. are crammed into overcrowded, high-stress confinement, jacked up on pharmaceuticals so they can endure squalid conditions without fresh air or room to move. This is not healthy for them, and not healthy for those who consume food produced under such circumstances.

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem: Avian Flu and the Reality of Animal Factories

Inside the vast, windowless barns of industrial egg production, tens of thousands—sometimes over a hundred thousand— hens are packed together in a single space, their entire existence confined to small metal cages or crowded floors.

In conventional caged systems, as many as 500,000 hens suffer in a single facility, each trapped in a space barely larger than a sheet of printer paper. Even in so-called "cage-free" systems, up to 100,000 hens can be packed into a single barn, enduring a relentless cycle of laying, exhaustion, and slaughter. These are sentient beings capable of pain and distress, subjected to inhumane conditions which inevitably affects the quality of the poultry consumed by human beings.

The stench inside these facilities is overwhelming. Ammonia and other toxic gases saturate the air making it difficult for even the healthiest person to breathe—let alone a small, vulnerable hen forced to live in it day after day.

Try, just for a moment, to imagine the life of a hen. The pain. The stress. The horror. Now consider that these are the conditions in which much of our animal-based food is produced. Even if one has no compassion for the animals, compassion for oneself and loved ones should instruct a concern of how food is produced and the reality of what is being ingested.

Remember, we are what we eat!

When disease inevitably strikes in these high-stress, unsanitary environments, the industry’s response is not prevention or reform. It is mass extermination. If a single case of avian flu is detected, it means every bird in the barn must die.

This is not disease management; it is systematic slaughter by this method:

Entire barns are sealed off, and the birds—still very much alive—are subjected to some of the most inhumane killing methods imaginable.

Ventilation Shut Down plus (VSD+) seals the barn while heat and carbon dioxide are pumped in, causing birds to gasp for air, thrash in panic, and die slowly over hours. In foam suffocation, a thick, suffocating sludge fills the barn, clogging beaks and nostrils, leading to a slow, agonizing death.

Carbon dioxide gassing burns the hens’ lungs as the gas fills the air before unconsciousness finally takes hold.

This year alone, 120 million birds have been killed, not because they were all sick but because mass killing is easier than transforming a broken system. Especially if the government is there for a bail out! This is not just a broken system; it is a moral catastrophe with financial consequences for consumers and taxpayers.

The $1 Billion Mistake: Propping Up a Diseased System

Rather than addressing the root cause of avian flu which is the animal factory system, the Administration has pledged $1 billion to develop vaccines and reinforce industrial confinement.

Hold on! Let’s pause for a moment. Didn’t we learn from COVID-19 that lockdowns and pharmaceutical interventions don’t create health? If that principle applies to humans, it also applies to other beings.

This current Administration was largely elected by voters frustrated with government overreach, vaccine concerns, and the mishandling of public health crises. RFK Jr’s MAHA movement helped to take the presidency over the top by popular vote.

But here we are with the USDA (during a funding freeze, no less) throwing money at a failing system vulnerable by design, instead of fixing the conditions that breed disease in the first place. This is why investing in vaccines and so-called “stricter” biosecurity measures will fail. Every time!

Farmers and consumers alike need real solutions to rising disease outbreaks, volatile food prices, food security concerns and an increasingly fragile agricultural system.

Instead of reinforcing an approach that relies on violence, confinement, pharmaceuticals and industry-oriented crisis management (much like our human disease management system), we have an opportunity to build true resilience.

Mass confinement animal factories aren’t just an animal welfare issue, they are a public health, zoonotic disease, antibiotic resistance and food security crisis.

When animals are unable to move freely, breathe fresh air or engage in natural behaviors like foraging, they become more vulnerable to disease. This is why animal factories are breeding grounds for avian influenza and other zoonotic diseases. Big farms breed big flu. Pure (putrid) and simple.

Instead of throwing money at the big pharma for vaccines and drugs, we should be investing in systems that promote optimal health and prevent disease from emerging in the first place. These systems are of course all nature-based, compassionate and pro life.

A Real Solution: Regenerative Poultry Farming

Food productions systems must be designed for the optimal health of the organism they are breeding and growing, the food and the farm animals being stewarded, to ensure the health of the organism, the overall system and ultimately the consumer.

Farm animal welfare is not a luxurious consideration. Animal welfare is the essential indicator for all to see, determining the health of an entire food production system.

High animal welfare, nature-based regenerative systems, are the foundation of a healthy, secure food system. When we raise animals with care, we create a system that supports life, one that regenerates, rather than one that breeds disease and destruction.

Imagine the natural habits of the hen. A happy hen in an environment fit for her wellbeing and thriving will be a healthy hen.

Ecologically-intensive regenerative poultry systems, like the Tree-Range® model pioneered by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, allow chickens to live as nature intended—scratching in the soil, foraging nutrient dense plants under trees, and naturally boosting their immunity. These healthy hens make healthy eggs, filled with additional micronutrients.

Nature-based, regenerative, high animal welfare organic systems dramatically reduce disease risk at the source, without pharmaceutical dependence. They produce healthier, higher-quality food free from antibiotic and vaccine residues. They revitalize rural economies by supporting small and mid-sized farms. They restore soil health and biodiversity, reversing the environmental damage caused by industrial confinement. Surely this is what we as a nation should be investing in!

Farms NOT Factories: End the Cage Age Now

Instead of funneling $1 billion ($1,000,000,000) into propping up inhumane, subprime industrial egg facilities, imagine deploying those funds to help farmers transition to healthier, decentralized, regenerative poultry farms which in turn create many more jobs and secure the future of rural economies. Thousands of farms could install tree-based, outdoor poultry systems. Disease risks would be reduced at the source, eliminating the need for costly pharmaceutical interventions.

Consumers would benefit from healthier, higher-quality food, free from excessive antibiotics, arsenic (a feed additive to promote faster growth, improve meat pigmentation, and prevent parasitic infections) and vaccine residues. Rural economies would be strengthened, and the environmental destruction caused by industrial animal factories would be reversed.

Regenerative organic agriculture is a public health solution. It strengthens immune systems, prevents disease, and restores the ecosystems we all depend on.

It’s time for policymakers, regenerative farmers, and public health leaders to come together and transform American agriculture.

US Department of Agriculture Secretary Rollins could lead this food systems transformation. She could call upon HHS Secretary Kennedy, Chair of the MAHA Commission, who has long recognized that public health achieved through creating conditions where health, and therefore life, thrives.

Shifting to ecologically intensive, animal-welfare farming systems can break this cycle by restoring natural immunity, reducing disease pressure, and promoting long-term food security.

Millions of Americans inspired by the rhetoric of MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) know that making agriculture healthy again is the foundation of true health. The time is now to End the Cage Age!

A healthy nation starts with a healthy, compassionate food system.

It’s time to Make Agriculture Healthy Again!

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Elizabeth Kucinich is the former Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., Board Policy Chair at the Rodale Institute (America’s oldest organic research institute) under whose leadership the ROC, Regenerative Organic Certification, was formed; advisor to TNC Director of Global Agriculture, advisor to Earthjustice Sustainable Food and Farming Program, and current advisor to Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) to whom she credits her entire career in policy transformation.