ARLINGTON, Va. – The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has awarded $100 million for 58 projects designed to help in the fight against the bird flu.

The objective of the funding is to “explore pathways toward vaccine development, therapeutics and other innovative strategies, all with the goal of finding new tools for dealing with this old problem,” explained Chelsey Shivley, DVM, with APHIS veterinary services.

Since the current highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) event began at a Dubois County, Ind., commercial turkey operation in February 2022, more than 204 million commercial and backyard birds have been impacted nationwide, APHIS said. The ongoing event is the largest animal health emergency in the nation’s history, according to the Indiana State Board of Animal Health.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has announced a five-prong approach to fighting HPAI, including boosting biosecurity and speeding repopulation, Shivley said. In March 2025, Rollins announced the HPAI Poultry Innovation Grand Challenge, which offered funding for innovative projects aimed at combating HPAI.

“The funding opportunity was intentionally broad as this is truly a grand challenge,” Shivley noted. “APHIS has invested $100 million to support high value and high impact projects that explore vaccines, therapeutics, research and other strategies to combat avian influenza, lower egg prices and protect the U.S. poultry industry.”

She spoke Feb. 19 during the USDA’s 102nd Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington.

APHIS worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies in developing the list of recipients, Shivley said. Those recipients included vaccine manufacturers, universities, producer organizations, small businesses and research partners.

The priorities for APHIS included developing novel vaccines and therapeutics, and to conduct research to further understand HPAI in poultry and improve response strategies, Shivley said. No HPAI vaccine has been authorized for use at this time except on a case by case basis, she added.

APHIS received 417 proposals totaling more than $793 million in funding requests, Shivley said. The agency chose to fund $32 million toward novel vaccines (17 projects), $26 million toward novel therapeutics (14 projects) and $42 million toward response strategies (27 projects).

The 58 projects have been fully implemented, she said.

For novel vaccine projects, “we really wanted to make sure that we were looking at safe, potent and efficacious (vaccines) across multiple avian species and that these vaccines would be effective against circulating clades,” Shivley said.

A clade is a group of organisms which evolved from a common ancestor.

For novel therapeutics, she said they were looking at products that could help prevent, control or eliminate the virus.

Improved response strategies include such things as environmental surveillance, she said. Other projects looked at transmission of the virus, improved diagnostics and expanded testing.

Since the current outbreak began, nearly 31 million birds – commercial and backyard flocks – had been impacted at press time by HPAI in Iowa, according to APHIS. Ohio had more than 25 million birds impacted; Indiana, over 9.9 million; Michigan, about 7.6 million; Tennessee, about 456,000; Kentucky, more than 287,000; and Illinois, about 235,000.