Trump administration firings hit key office handling bird flu response

Laboratories in a national network testing for bird flu were notified 25 percent of the coordinating USDA staff were fired in the 2025 Valentine's Day Massacre.

At a time bird flu has spread from coast to coast and is now in the Midwest—causing some grocery stores to ration eggs—DOGE hit the USDA department that is the front line of surveillance for the entire outbreak. Avian influenza has killed more than 22 million birds in the last 30 days, according to USDA’s latest data. The virus has spread in the past year to dairy cattle, infecting the majority of California’s herds and setting off outbreaks in more than a dozen states.

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced a third spillover event — the term for when a new strain of the virus infects another species — in dairy cattle in Arizona.

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