When President Trump took office, his administration instituted an external communications blackout across health agencies.

Maurice Pitesky, an associate professor at the U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said with prices reaching almost a dollar an egg, investing in a backyard flock might actually save money in the long run.

The statement explained that many of the positions were in the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, exactly the kind of jobs you’d want to have good people for, given the possibility of meat and poultry infected with bird flu entering the U.S. food supply.

The department is trying to rehire the employees as avian influenza causes egg prices to soar and as Elon Musk’s DOGE makes sweeping cuts to government agencies

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is scrambling to rehire officials terminated in the DOGE purge who were working on the government’s response to the outbreak of H5N1 avian flu, also known as bird flu.