Trump Officials Race To Rehire Bird Flu Employees As Egg Prices Skyrocket

The Trump administration touted a nearly $1 billion plan Wednesday to combat the spread of avian flu and mitigate skyrocketing egg prices as the outbreak rips through poultry flocks across the United States.

But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors.

The dismissals have already helped trigger a partial shutdown at one of the department’s research facilities, according to two USDA employees, interrupting some workers' efforts to fight bird flu and help livestock recover from illness.

Now, agency officials are running into logistical challenges in reinstating its bird flu staff — and convincing them to return to jobs while the president repeatedly attempts to squeeze government workers.  

Bird flu is spreading beyond poultry and is infecting dairy herds across more than a dozen states, with no end in sight. That’s made the staffing woes at USDA a key concern, with the past few weeks revealing how much easier it is to fire employees than it is to bring them back, even when their jobs are crucial for public health.

“I don’t know if people are going to want to come back,” said one USDA employee granted anonymity to discuss the firings and attempted rehirings without fear of retribution. “Now there’s this perception that federal jobs are not secure. I think they permanently damaged these services.”

Supervisors at USDA have been told they need to write a justification for every bird flu employee called back, said one person familiar with the process. Some of those who were rehired this week still don’t have their laptops. And it’s not clear all of the ousted workers have received return offers, or that they plan to accept them, potentially leaving key offices understaffed on the response to the outbreak.

A few reinstated workers were once again sent emails urging them to take the Trump administration's “deferred resignation” plan, according to two people familiar with the situation.

“Rather than measure twice and cut once, it’s more like everyone is on the chopping block and then, ‘Oh shit we cut the wrong people,’” another USDA employee said.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ new bird flu strategy includes financial relief for farmers and importing more eggs. But her announcement Wednesday didn’t address USDA’s efforts to rehire workers.

Several of the hundreds of fired employees at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the agency leading the federal avian influenza response, were promised their jobs back. So were employees at the National Animal Health Laboratory Network program office, which helps coordinate testing and tracking of the virus among labs across the country, a USDA spokesperson confirmed.

The spokesperson also said that veterinarians, animal health technicians and other emergency response personnel at APHIS were “exempted” from the initial firings, although it’s not clear if that exemption insulated every employee working on bird flu.

One of the USDA employees said they’re still waiting to hear from multiple people if they’ll take the administration up on the offer to return.

The White House’s and billionaire Elon Musk’s effort to rapidly shrink the federal government — and inability to immediately rehire terminated employees — has also held up major research initiatives on combating bird flu, other animal diseases and helping livestock recover from illness.

According to the department’s spokesperson, “about a dozen … probationary employees whose roles were primarily administrative and were not deemed essential to the functions of the lab” were fired at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas, which studies zoonotic and foreign animal diseases.

USDA’s U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, one of the most prominent agricultural research facilities in the country, lost more than a quarter of its staff under the initial firings, jeopardizing millions of dollars’ worth of federally-funded research, according to two people familiar with the situation.

They said USDA has since asked two employees who were working on bird flu and several scientists to come back to the center. Though some of those employees have returned to the office this week, they don’t have their laptops, rendering them unable to adequately complete their work.

Like at NBAF, USDA declined to bring back people who support the research but are not lead scientists. But without those staff, Dairy Forage still isn’t fully operational, two people said.

Just this week, a technician’s absence prompted chaos: A machine used for testing certain plant and soil samples and primarily managed by one of the fired technicians, caught on fire, forcing Dairy Forage employees to evacuate.

Many research projects were left unfinished, and it’s not clear that the few who were rehired will be able to pick up where others left off.

“If … they have projects that are ongoing, all of that work has now essentially been thrown out, discarded and dead in the water,” said Dr. Mary Beth Hall, a retired Dairy Forage researcher. “You’ve got God knows how many millions of dollars of research that’s just been thrown away.”