The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it is working quickly to reverse the firings of several agency employees who are working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 outbreak.
“Although several positions supporting (bird flu efforts) were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. “USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission.”
USDA said several jobs — including veterinarians, animal health technicians and other emergency health personnel — have been exempted from the “recent personnel actions to continue to support the HPAI response and other animal health priorities.”
FSIS, along with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), all work to respond to animal disease outbreaks, as does the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN), part of APHIS.
According to reports, 25% of the staff at the NAHLN’s program office were fired last weekend. Thousands of other USDA staff have been notified that they would lose their jobs.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said last week that she had convened a briefing on H5N1 and “reviewed options for a comprehensive strategy to combat avian flu and lower the price of eggs.” She said she plans to finalize and implement this strategy “in short order.”
To date, there have been 755 commercial poultry flocks confirmed with H5N1 since the start of the outbreak in February 2022. More than 161 million birds have been killed during this outbreak. According to information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been at least 68 confirmed human cases of H5N1 in 11 states since the beginning of 2024.
