Chicken farmers must now prove biosecurity to get paid for bird flu losses
What happened
The US Department of Agriculture has changed the rules for its National Poultry Improvement Plan. Chicken farmers must now show they have a biosecurity plan in place to receive government payments for certain bird flu outbreaks.
Why it matters
The government will no longer automatically pay farmers for losses from low-severity bird flu. This means farmers now have a direct financial incentive to invest in preventing outbreaks, rather than just managing the aftermath. It shifts some of the financial risk of disease control from taxpayers to individual producers.
The signal
Watch for an increase in the number of farms adopting certified biosecurity plans, and whether the total indemnity payments for low pathogenicity avian influenza decrease over the next few years.