Big Bird. Big Problem.

 How the Poultry Industry is Turning the Avian Flu Pandemic into a Source of Profit at Taxpayer’s Expense While Decimating Our Farm & Food System 

September 2025 

In September 2025, the Land Stewardship Project produced a white paper on the strain of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that emerged in 2022 in the United States. The white paper asks key questions about the role the mega-confinement, industrialized poultry system of agriculture has played in creating and propagating this pandemic. Are these operations the “victims” of a virus that originated in an environment outside of Big Ag’s control? Or is the Big Bird CAFO system itself the source of the problem? And is society’s strategy of paying big poultry companies to wipe out infected flocks and to continue business as usual yet one more way of subsidizing a system of food production that is inherently unsustainable? The paper concludes with a short list of proposals that could start us on the road toward a more resilient poultry production system.

You can view the full report as well as its executive summary below. For more information, contact Sean Carroll, LSP’s policy director, via e-mail.