Sorry, my lens is that I was an ag research at the USDA through he Farm Bill. A healthy nation does not put all its eggs in one basket, so to speak. The person

Sorry, my lens is that I was an ag research at the USDA through he Farm Bill. A healthy nation does not put all its eggs in one basket, so to speak. The person you replied to said, "I think GP is saying, the point is that the biosecurity controls are to protect local agriculture in the sense of ensuring availability. If there's no availability due to cartel practices anyway then spending effort enforcing biosecurity controls is pointless." I generally agree with this. People don't import eggs when they have access to affordable eggs, implying that importers of unlikely diseased eggs or no are not likely to be proximal to farms. (And more importantly, why take imported eggs to a farm? Are producers importing? Doubtful.) So, how'd we get here? The recent consolidation and prevalence of factory farms, in addition to introducing food supply fragility by forcing smaller producers to exit the market, has created the most adversarial conditions for hens. Shrinking factory farms and bolstering more and smaller producers will reduce the incidence of outbreaks and limit the amount of culling needed. I'm also contending that humans also suffer because of this, and while it's noble to consider the chickens, doing so in our current state does not decrease either their vulnerability or the harm to vulnerable human populations. When you play with food prices and availability, there are real effects to development and educational performance in children that are not quick or simple to quantify. I think both deserve to be healthy.