Bird Flu Is Scrambling the Egg Industry—and It’s the Chickens Who Suffer Most.

If you’ve noticed higher prices or empty shelves in the egg aisle recently, you’re not alone. The United States is grappling with the worst bird flu outbreak in history, and it’s taken a huge toll on birds used for eggs. Tens of millions of egg-laying hens have died or been culled (killed to contain the virus), causing egg shortages and sticker shock at the grocery store. But beyond the inconvenience to us as consumers lies a tragic reality for the birds. In this post, we’ll crack open the facts about the ongoing bird flu crisis—its scale, the industry’s response (including a controversial mass-culling method), and how the cramped, stressful conditions of factory farms helped create a perfect storm for a virus to spread. We’ll also explore what can be done about it.

A Bird Flu Outbreak of Unprecedented Scale

The current bird flu outbreak, caused by a highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), began in early 2022 and shows little sign of slowing down. It has already devastated poultry flocks across the country and the world. By mid 2023, over 58 million domestic birds (mostly chickens and turkeys) had died in the U.S. due to this virus. Since then, the disease has kept spreading in waves. As of 2025, the cumulative toll (including backyard flocks and wild birds) has climbed to staggering heights—160 million birds have been killed by the outbreak nationwide.

Hens used for eggs have been hit especially hard. Entire henhouses with flocks up to five million birds have been culled when even a single bird in the flock tests positive. 

Factory Farms: A Perfect Breeding Ground for Disease

It’s fair to ask: How did we end up in this nightmare scenario? Why is bird flu ripping through our poultry farms in the first place? One big reason is the way we raise chickens in modern industrial agriculture. Factory farming practices create the perfect storm for a virus like avian influenza to thrive. Picture a typical commercial egg farm: huge buildings packed with birds. The birds may live stacked on top of one another in battery cages. The air may be thick with dust and ammonia from waste, ventilation may be poor, and the birds are under constant stress. These conditions are a virus’s dream and a chicken’s nightmare.

We all learned during COVID-19 that, when you crowd living beings together in confined spaces, illness spreads like wildfire. 

Moreover, factory farms don’t just spread disease—they can supercharge it. When a virus gets into an enormous flock, it finds abundant hosts to multiply in, which increases the chance for the virus to mutate or “amplify” into more dangerous forms. In other words, these facilities can act like giant incubators for disease. 

Stressed Birds, Weakened Defenses

Another often overlooked factor is how chronic stress and poor welfare weaken the birds’ ability to fight off disease. Chickens in industrial farms endure multiple stressors: overcrowding (little room to move or escape pecking from cage-mates), unnatural light patterns, and high ammonia levels, to name a few. Stressors wreak havoc on an animal’s immune system. In simple terms, a bird that’s living in misery is much less equipped to resist a virus.

Consider how you tend to get sick more easily when you’re extremely stressed out or sleep-deprived. Similarly, an overstressed hen whose body is pushed to the limit to lay eggs is going to have a harder time coping with an invading virus. Better welfare standards—like giving birds more space, enrichments to reduce stress, clean air, and a more natural life—wouldn’t just be kinder; they could actually make flocks less prone to massive disease outbreaks. 

Mass Culling: A “Solution” of Torture 

When bird flu is detected on a farm, the industry response is often brutal: kill all the birds in that flock to contain the spread. Worse yet, many poultry companies have turned to a method that causes excruciating suffering: ventilation shutdown plus, or VSD+ .

What is VSD+? It’s a mass-culling method that essentially bakes the birds alive. People seal up the chicken factory farm, shut off all the fans and ventilation, and pump in additional heat or gases. The temperature inside skyrockets. The chickens, still conscious, slowly die from heat stroke, suffocation, and organ failure over a period of hours.

During the height of the 2022 outbreak, an analysis by the Animal Welfare Institute found the majority of poultry operations chose VSD+ to kill their flocks.

So next time you see an empty shelf in the egg aisle, you’ll know it represents death—either from bird flu itself, or from a “depopulation” method, likely torturous VSD+.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Faced with the catastrophe of bird flu, what should be done? Continuing to kill huge numbers of chickens in horrific ways isn’t working.

One proposal gaining traction is vaccinating poultry against avian influenza. Historically, the U.S. has been hesitant to vaccinate chickens for bird flu due to trade concerns (many countries won’t import poultry meat from vaccinated flocks). But the scale of this outbreak is forcing a rethink. Vaccinating birds against HPAI could benefit animal welfare, the egg industry, and consumers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave conditional approval to an avian influenza vaccine. This could offer promise to huge numbers of animals.

Another area that our nation’s egg industry should focus on is improving conditions on industrial farms to prevent these outbreaks in the first place. Farms should implement lower stocking densities (fewer birds per house), better ventilation systems, and higher sanitation standards to curb the spread of disease. 

Conclusion:

The ongoing bird flu outbreak has revealed cracks in the factory farming model that can no longer be ignored. Yes, avian influenza is a formidable virus, but the scale of this disaster could likely have been avoided by treating chickens more humanely. Yet, there’s room for hope and change. 

About Legal Impact for Chickens

This post is brought to you by Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC). LIC is a litigation nonprofit that advocates for chickens and other farmed animals. We work to enforce existing cruelty laws and to improve animal welfare. LIC is a 501(c)(3) public charity and a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. 

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Thank you for caring about birds!