Fired USDA workers were ‘boots on the ground’ in bird flu battle

DES MOINES, Iowa − Just six weeks from completing her one-year probation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, Kim Vore loved her work.

But on Feb. 14, in what federal workers are now calling the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Vore joined thousands of her counterparts who were suddenly out of a job.

She was the sole remaining visual information specialist in a unit that was supposed to have three people at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, part of a large complex of national USDA offices in Ames that work on issues of animal and plant health.

Vore was working with scientists researching bird flu in cattle, helping them present their findings.

“I helped them with the artwork that they submit with their articles. So I was working on graphics work for that,” she said. “When they do their scientific work and they print posters, I help them with graphics and printing of the posters. They travel with them, share their work.

“Nothing important, you know, just little things that record the health of our system out there,” she added, tongue-in-cheek.

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Attributed to Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency established by the Trump administration, the Friday layoffs − reportedly largely targeting employees like Vore who were still on employment probation − rippled through agencies from the Federal Aviation Administration to the National Institutes of Health.

Ames, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, has 900 federal employees, among them the workers at the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS. Also located in Ames are the USDA’s National Animal Disease Center and National Veterinary Services Laboratory.

Like many federal workers caught in the sudden layoffs, Vore said she does not think her superiors had much advance warning that the job cuts were coming.

“Everybody kind of found out at the same time,” she said, adding that the email notice of her job being eliminated came shortly after 11 p.m. the night before.

She said employees had heard about the possibility of probationary employees being laid off.

“But you never think it’s gonna be you. No way they’ll do this, right?” she said.

Now Vore, who is in the process of buying a new house and selling her old house, is faced with two mortgages and no job.

Still, she is hopeful that federal funding gets sorted out and she can one day return to a job she loves.

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On her last day Friday, she said, she was asked if she would return to the job if the situation would change to allow it. Her response: “Absolutely.”

“I love the job, love the company (of her fellow employees). The people are just, you know, they work hard and people think it’s a waste of money,” she said. “These scientists get paid less through federal government than they do in the civilian world and they choose to take that because they care about their work so damn much, and they work hard for no more money.

“So to say you’re cutting waste and spending like that just isn’t the case with these workers,” Vore said.

Bird flu workers are cut: ‘We aren’t bureaucrats’

Also caught up in the job cuts was Ron Gregory. He worked for a USDA plant protection and quarantine office in Wyoming, but said probationary people from his area, including him, were scheduled to go to Iowa and Ohio to provide biosecurity in the battle against bird flu.

“At the request of our leadership, it was an ‘all hands on deck’, meaning we all had to be ready to go,” Gregory said in an email to the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network. “A large portion of the people that have been on the front lines of this, doing 21-day stints, all lost their jobs as well.”

Gregory, who would have completed his probationary period on March 9, said offices like his inspect fruit, vegetables and animals for diseases so the products can be exported. One of the primary functions of his office was to inspect potatoes grown in Idaho for potato nematodes prior to export.

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“It doesn’t appear that there are enough people left at these offices to accomplish the testing. This means that farmers likely won’t be able to export their potatoes,” wrote Gregory, a disabled veteran.

More than anything, he said, he wants the public to understand the importance of the work being done by those laid off.

“We aren’t ‘bureaucrats,’ as the media portrayed us. I never worked from home a single day, showing up to the office at 6 am and leaving when I was done working,” he wrote. “I never got a single dollar of overtime pay, even on days that I worked 12 hours.”

What effect are cuts having on bird flu battle?

The effect of the cuts on the USDA’s efforts to monitor and control bird flu are unclear.

The disease is a particular threat in Iowa, the nation’s largest producer of eggs and also a major producer of turkeys. Millions of birds in infected Iowa flocks have been destroyed to prevent the spread of the disease in the current outbreak, which began in 2022, and the losses have resulted in shortages of and inflated prices for eggs.

The Iowa Department of Agriculture on Wednesday reported yet another outbreak, among a turkey flock.

Bird flu also has spread to dairy cattle − the focus of the scientists Vore was working with. Other federal scientists have been trying to gauge the potential for its spread among humans, most of whom so far have suffered only mild symptoms when infected.

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A spokesperson for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig’s office on Tuesday said the layoffs had had no effect on the department’s bird flu response. But the USDA acknowledged that, as NBC News reported Tuesday, it was seeking to rehire key workers in the bird flu response that it said it had accidentally laid off. And Politico reported that about a quarter of the employees had been laid off in a USDA office that coordinates the work of labs around the country that keep tabs on bird flu.

In Minnesota, Michael Crusan, a state board of animal health spokesperson, said Wednesday that the layoffs have created confusion for state responders during an already “challenging time.”

“We’re responding on multiple disease fronts,” Crusan said, citing bird flu in poultry and cows and a Minnesota outbreak of avian metapneumovirus, a respiratory disease among birds. “It’s hard enough to maintain consistency and make sure that all the working parts are in order and moving effectively.”

Not knowing “where we’ll be with some of our federal resources definitely plays into a little bit of uncertainty in our response,” he said.

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The agency learned last week that federal employees working in Minnesota had been fired, he said, but he’s unsure how many. One person’s termination was rescinded this week, he said.

With an outbreak that began nearly three years ago, every person counts when responding in an emergency, Crusan said, adding that the federal government provides indemnity payments to producers who suffer losses due to an animal disease outbreak. Poultry producers, for example, must destroy their flock to prevent the spread of the highly contagious deadly disease.

And the USDA also provides “boots on the ground.” For example, state and federal veterinarians take samples at farms for testing and conduct other surveillance work.

It “definitely takes all of the resources we have in our state − at the state and federal level − to be able to respond to this disease,” Crusan said, adding that USDA workers in Minnesota are “some of the most dedicated people that you could ever imagine working with.

“They’re out there doing what they can with us on the front line,” he said.

Iowa resists Trump bird flu plans

The turmoil comes as the Trump administration indicates it may change its approach to controlling the disease. For years, the USDA’s policy has been to destroy any flock in which an infection of the highly pathogenic avian influenza is detected. In the case of Iowa, with its vast laying hen facilities, that has in some cases meant wiping out millions of birds at a time.

Disinfecting facilities and then rebuilding the flocks takes time, and the result has been the eggs shortages and record prices.

Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Kevin Hassett, President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, said the administration would look at an approach that would focus on “better ways, with biosecurity and medication and so on,” to avoid the mass euthanizations of poultry.

Hassett didn’t specify how biosecurity measures would differ from the high levels of protective measures farmers already have adopted, or whether the medications would include vaccinations for the millions of birds on U.S. poultry farms.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and the state’s U.S. senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, have urged the USDA to ramp up the approval process for animal vaccines in connection with bird flu. But poultry trade groups have resisted that idea, saying that because vaccines can mask symptoms in infected birds, other countries likely would ban U.S. poultry exports. They point to the cost and of vaccinating so many birds and question the feasibility of such an approach.

Ernst, in a news release Wednesday, said she and Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat and fellow Senate Agriculture Committee member, had sent a letter to the USDA signed by them and other members of Congress calling for measures including:

• A forward-looking strategy for vaccination in affected laying hens and turkeys.

• “Outreach to partners overseas to protect and maintain international trade.”

• Establishing a strategic initiative “to engage with industry experts and develop methods for prevention and response”;” to bird flu.

• “Ensuring auditors are both in place and qualified to carry out biosecurity assessments.”

• “Revising indemnity rates for laying hens and pullets to accurately compensate impacted producers.”

(This story was updated to add new information.)

Kevin Baskins covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected].

Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fired USDA workers were fighting bird flu epidemic