Washington Report

WHAT HAPPENED: The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies held a hearing on Thursday about the Department of Agriculture’s FY27 budget. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins was the lone witness. Her opening remarks can be found here.

WHY IT MATTERS: Several issues of importance to the broiler industry were discussed during the hearing, including poultry line speeds, Packers and Stockyards regulations, and avian influenza.

WHAT THEY SAID: “Fewer onerous regulations mean our farmers, ranchers, and foresters have more freedom to do what they do best. That’s why we’ve pursued rules to speed up lines at poultry processing plants, streamline the National Environmental Policy Act process from seven to one rulemaking and we are making it easier for livestock to graze on federal lands, which we are executing in partnership with Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior.” — Secretary Rollins in her opening statement.

“I appreciate your efforts, Secretary Rollins, to modernize meat and poultry processing systems, and proposed updates to line speed regulations, for instance, to increase processing efficiency, to lower costs for consumers, while upholding USDA’s high standards for food and worker safety. I appreciate that you’ve delayed the Biden-era Packers and Stockyards rules that would end the poultry tournament system. I’m confident that a comprehensive economic analysis will show the financial harm this rule will cause to poultry growers, and increasing prices, especially for producers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I urge you to fully repeal the rule, rather than allow it to tear down the efficient, successful poultry market structure that helps both farmers and consumers.” — Committee Chairman Rep. Andy Harris (MD-01) in his opening statement.

“I’d like to take a moment to thank you for your leadership on two particular areas important to the district I represent. I represent the 4th district of Alabama, which is the northern part of the state of Alabama, and it’s one of the leading poultry districts in the nation. I appreciate your recent directive to permanently increase the line speeds for poultry and pork processors and eliminate outdated administrative requirements. For too long, these requirements have constrained production. They’ve imposed unnecessary costs on American producers, while countries like Canada, Brazil and Argentina operate at significantly higher line speeds using comparable equipment, placing U.S. producers at a competitive disadvantage. Also, I’d like to thank you for your recent announcement proposing an 18-month delay on implementation of the Poultry Grower Payment Systems and Capital Improvement rule. I’d advocate for this rule to be fully rescinded, as well.” — Rep. Robert Aderholt (AL-04) in his remarks.

“A year ago, when I came in, this is what was sort of told to me: ‘The vaccines are ready, they are produced here.’ Let’s go. And I assumed that made a ton of sense to me. But then I asked the question, ‘Where across the world have these vaccines for HPAI been deployed?’ Because avian bird flu is all over the world. Where has it been deployed and where has it been proven that the vaccine can beat the virus? Because obviously on the health side of things, often the virus, the quote is, ‘The virus often wins.’ So I started a pretty significant pretty couple of months research effort. I visited several of the research facilities. I talked to veterinarians who are on both sides of the issue. And what it came down to is there is nowhere yet in the world that has gone ahead of us on this, that has proven that this vaccine can be effective. So as we’re looking at it, and by the way, I’ve got a $100 million innovation grant, we’ve got about 40% of that is on the vaccine side. We’re considering pilot programs on the vaccine. We are moving out. I’ve been talking to Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Polis of Colorado, and of course there are other egg-heavy states, Iowa, Ohio. And they were just in for the Easter Egg Roll. So I talked to all of them. Again, they believe this is the only solution. And they could be right. But before I make that decision, we’ve already seen it jump to dairy cattle and we have to make sure that we’re not putting ourselves in a worse position by exposing humans. And so that’s what I’m working to try to resolve. As I mentioned in the top of my comments, we’ve put so much money into biosecurity, cases of HPAI are down 60% over last year, and the number of birds infected is down 46%. So we’ve made progress on biosecurity.” — Secretary Rollins when asked by Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3) about the status of an HPAI vaccine.

NCC’s TAKE: We appreciate Reps. Harris and Aderholt, and Secretary Rollins’ support for increasing poultry line speeds and for delaying the implementation of the “Poultry Grower Payment Systems and Capital Improvement Systems” rule. Until we have written assurances and trade protections in place with our trading partners, NCC will continue to oppose HPAI vaccination for any species.