Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is proposing a $1 billion plan to tackle bird flu and lower the cost of eggs. Elements of the plan, though, may divide the MAGA-MAHA coalition and Congress — and not along standard partisan lines.

In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Ms. Rollins laid out a five-prong plan that includes $500 million for biosecurity measures, $400 million for financial relief to impacted farmers, and $100 million for avian flu vaccine research and development. Not mentioned is the USDA’s mandate that entire flocks be killed if a bird is infected with the virus.

More than 20 million egg-laying hens were killed in the United States in the last quarter of 2024 alone from bird flu and culling operations. More than 160 million hens have been killed since 2022. This has seriously constrained the country’s egg supply. Ms. Rollins’ plan includes importing eggs to temporarily ease prices.

The average cost of a dozen eggs is now $4.95, up 53 percent from one year ago. President Trump, who ran on combating inflation and improving the economy, is feeling the heat. “I’m hearing so much about eggs,” Mr. Trump said last Friday, adding his administration needs to “figure out something fast.”

This fast solution, though, seeks to repeal state animal welfare regulations that target factory farming — and it will face steep opposition in Congress. These laws coalesce support from Freedom Caucus members, the Make America Healthy Again coalition, and many Democrats. This support on the right is not the typical vegan animal rights activism but more of a libertarian carnivore diet type with a moral twist and a states’ rights focus.

“It could be a big enough fight to derail the farm bill,” the agriculture commissioner of Texas, Sid Miller, tells The New York Sun of any attempts to undo these state regulations.

Killing Chickens

“She’s probably got as heavy a lift as any incoming AG Secretary ever,” Mr. Miller, who was reportedly in contention to be Trump’s secretary of agriculture, says about Ms. Rollins, whom he considers a friend. Yet Mr. Miller thinks killing entire flocks of birds is a shortsighted approach.

“Cowboy logic would tell you that’s going to cause a huge shortage of eggs and chicken wings, and that’s where we are now,” Mr. Miller says. “The smart thing to do is just let the flu run its course, let it kill the weak chickens and others develop immunity, and they can pass it through their eggs.”

Trump’s National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett, has made similar statements about reversing the USDA’s bird culling policy. Ms. Rollins told Fox News on Wednesday that, “We’re hopefully going to have some pilot programs around the country that work to prove that out.” Yet that wasn’t part of her proposed $1 billion plan.

Some of the same voices on the right who were critical of the government’s Covid response are now sounding the alarm over the USDA’s flock culling policy and not letting natural immunity take hold in American chickens. A libertarian self-described “lunatic farmer,” Joel Salatin, who is a regenerative farming influencer with a vast following, says that all the major outbreaks of avian flu are occurring in large-scale industrial farms and that the USDA’s culling policy and focus on vaccines is misguided.

“I think it’s a waste of billions of dollars,” a New Hampshire homesteader, Jon Leslie, tells the Sun of the USDA paying farmers to kill their birds and then replace them. A conservative Army veteran, Mr. Leslie follows Mr. Salatin’s regenerative methods to raise chickens, lambs, and pigs on his 28-acre farm. He says he wishes Congressman Thomas Massie, a proponent of sustainable agriculture and friend of Mr. Salatin, had been appointed agriculture secretary.

“The cost of eggs being what they are is due to this, because then you have another six-month turnaround time before the new birds can actually be producing eggs,” he says of the mass killings. “The federal government should not pay for that.”

Many of these voices on the right say that USDA subsidies and meat processing and labelling policies favor large-scale industrial farms, not the little guys. The number of American farms is steadily declining, according to USDA figures, while the size of farms is increasing, meaning the Big Ag players are taking over an increasingly large share of the market. 

The top four pork producers now control nearly 70 percent of the pork market. One in five eggs on store shelves comes from a single producer, Cal-Maine Foods. The top four egg producers control half the American egg market.

The World Health Organization is now recommending vaccinating poultry. The USDA has yet to authorize a vaccine, the widespread use of which could hinder American exports since some countries bar vaccinated poultry. The USDA says it accidently fired several researchers working on avian flu earlier this month but is working to rehire them.

Avian flu has spread to cattle, cats, and there are at least 68 confirmed cases in America in people, who are mainly farm workers and have mild symptoms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under the control of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is overseeing the country’s bird flu response.

Mr. Kennedy is steeped in regenerative agriculture concepts. “I have a lot of plans for ending corporate control over our food supply and over our farmland,” he said while campaigning for president. “I’m going to reverse 80 years of farm policy in this country, which have directed us toward industrial agriculture, industrial meat production, factory farming, chemical-based agriculture, carbon-based fertilizers — all these things that are destroying the soils in our country. It’s poisoning the food.”

States’ Rights and Animal Welfare

One of the prongs of Ms. Rollins’ bird flu plan includes “removing unnecessary regulatory burdens on egg producers.” This may sound like a standard Republican talking point, but Ms. Rollins specifically mentions one regulation, California’s Proposition 12, which bars the sale of eggs, pork, and veal in the state from animals raised in extreme confinement.

At least 15 states have animal confinement regulations, including Massachusetts, Arizona, and Ohio, but California’s size and the scope of the law have made it enemy number one of Big Ag lobbyists. The National Pork Producers Council sued California in 2019 over the law, saying it violated the Constitution by limiting interstate commerce, since animal products produced in other states must follow California’s confinement rules if they sell their products there.

The Supreme Court upheld California’s law on a states’ rights basis in an opinion issued in 2023 by Justice Gorsuch. Yet that hasn’t stopped members of Congress from big agriculture states from trying to overturn the law through legislation, most notably the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, which failed in the last session.

Ms. Rollins, in her confirmation hearing, committed to Senator Ernst of Iowa that she would work with the Senate Agriculture Committee to repeal Proposition 12. “I’m a federalism believer,” Ms. Rollins said but added, “there’s no doubt that it’s not just affecting California, it’s affecting multitudes of other states.”

This may not sit well with MAHA followers of Mr. Kennedy or members of the Freedom Caucus who opposed the EATS Act, most notably Congresswomen Nancy Mace and Anna Paulina Luna. This is not just an animal welfare issue but also a states’ rights and national security one. The country’s largest pork producer is Smithfield Foods, which is Communist China owned.

“In China, so-called pig skyscrapers are commonplace. These facilities resemble industrial sized wet markets where hundreds of thousands of pigs are crammed together on each floor,” President Trump’s national security adviser in his first term, General Michael Flynn, wrote about his opposition to the EATS Act in August.

The general warned that these factory farms could help spread avian flu and, “the more we let our supply chains become consolidated the more they are vulnerable to Chinese direct supply chain disruptions and cyberattacks.”

Ms. Ernst described Proposition 12 in Ms. Rollins’ confirmation hearing as hurting “family farmers,” but it is large-scale factory farmers and their lobbyists who most vigorously oppose the Golden State law. The chief executive of the National Pork Producers Council, Bryan Humphreys, told the Sun by email that California’s law has caused a “demonstrable increase in the cost of food.” 

“These astonishing circumstances defy common sense and can only be appreciated by those who authored the rule — vegan activists who make no secret of their zealous efforts to end animal agriculture,” Mr. Humphreys said.

The notion that all supporters of Proposition 12 are leftwing vegans, though, is far from the truth. There is a seemingly growing MAHA-MAGA contingent who cares about animal welfare because they want to eat humanely raised meat without antibiotics pumped in it and they care about whether a pregnant sow is held in a crate so small she can’t move her body.

A post about Ms. Rollins confirmation hearing went viral on X, with several rightwing commentators expressing their disgust with the cruelty of gestation cages for pigs and factory farming practices.

“Factory farming should actually be the next big agenda item to pursue after you fix immigration and gut DEI. We need an effective young Rufo type figure to take on factory farms like he did with antiracism and gender ideology,” Red Scare podcaster, Anna Kachyan, posted to X. “Enough needless animal cruelty and waste!”

“Yeah, food systems need a bit reboot, ‘crated pigs’ is awful,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Chris Rufo, posted in response.

“For many years Republicans were asleep at the wheel, and Democrats hijacked the animal welfare issue set,” a conservative animal rights lobbyist, Marty Irby, tells the Sun. “People are just waking up and realizing what they’re putting int their bodies matters, and how the animal is raised.”

Break the System

A farmer and rancher in Texas, Mr. Miller says he doesn’t like Proposition 12 and thinks animals in large-scale factory farms are happier in their climate-controlled cages than free-range hens and pigs. Yet he says he’s a states’ rights guy. “We lost. Get over it. If you want to sell pork or chicken in California, adjust your operation,” he says.

Senator Ernst and Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson are leading the fight in Congress to repeal Proposition 12, but there is large Democrat support as well. “Well, there’s probably some truth to that,” Mr. Miller says when asked whether Ms. Ernst is beholden to Big Ag lobbyists. “I’m sure they’ve probably contributed to her campaign.”

Ms. Ernst’s office did not return the Sun’s request for comment. Neither did the USDA. 

“I’m on the side with General Flynn and Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders — it’s kind of an odd group,” Mr. Miller says. “You’ve got hardcore constitutionalists like myself aligning with humaniacs and vegans and the other side. It’s kind of comical, actually.”

Whether a strong rightwing animal welfare movement will foment in the coming months as the farm bill is renegotiated and the Trump administration tries to implement its bird flu response remains to be seen. There is, though, a growing contingent of health, clean eating, and sustainable farming influencers and voters on the right who are speaking up.

Mr. Leslie says he pays “approximately zero” attention to the farm bill, but there are USDA regulations regarding meat processing that unduly burden small farmers like himself. He’d like to see the Trump administration tackle that. He also wants to see more accuracy in country-of-origin labelling for meat, which would help American small farmers.

Trump may want cheap bacon and eggs on store shelves — and for his approval rating — but he’s showing he’s ready to break the system, at least on other fronts. Losing support from Midwestern states with Big Ag operations, though, may be a bridge too far.

Mr. Irby is hopeful. He says that Trump 1.0 signed a surprising number of animal welfare laws and that Lara Trump is a big voice for animal welfare. 

“At the end of the day, the USDA is supposed to be helping the American family farmer, and all the USDA has done is put American family farmers out of business for decades,” Mr. Irby says. “I think the Trump administration, RFK Jr. and his leaders should take a wrecking ball to the place.”