House Bill Expands How & Who Can Test for Avian Flu
Today, Pennsylvania representatives voted on and passed their first bill of the 2025/26 legislative session. HB 324, sponsored by Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, updates a law about certified poultry technicians.
For the first time since last February, Pennsylvania has cases of avian flu at commercial farms. A 50,000 bird flock on a Lehigh County farm was depopulated last week— and during bill arguments this afternoon, Minority Chair of the House Agriculture Committee Rep. Dan Moul said 2 million chickens were getting depopulated in the Harrisburg area today.
The entire nation has been fighting avian flu outbreaks in commercial flocks since January, 2022. The disease is deadly to chickens, with entire commercial flocks getting wiped out at times. This impacts the supply of eggs, which in turn impacts the price of eggs.
A key role in Pennsylvania that helps the state respond to outbreaks are certified poultry technicians.
These are people who go through a day of training given by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. They learn how to spot disease symptoms in birds, how to follow bio security protocols, and how to take bio samples that can be used in official testing.
Whenever a poultry farmer suspects a disease case on their farm, they must contact the Department of Agriculture. The next step is to then hire a certified poultry technician to come collect samples to be tested.
Current law says that a certified poultry technician cannot be an employee of the farm where they are collecting samples. Another requirement is that a technician must be a U.S. Citizen.
H.B. 324 updates the law so that anyone who can legally work in the U.S. can apply to be a technician; a key change for an industry with many immigrant workers.
The bill also removes the limit that an employee cannot collect samples for their employer.
"I'm all about creating win win opportunities, right? So you empower the poultry farmers, the poultry owners, to give their employees opportunities to become certified,” Cepeda-Freytiz said.
The bill also raises the technician certification fee from $5 to $10, allows the test to be offered in Spanish, and says the agriculture secretary can create quarantine order rules and suspend or revoke a technician license for not following those quarantine orders.
Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R-Clinton) spoke on the House floor in opposition to the bill for the quarantine order expansion, as well as raised opposition to changing the citizenship part of the law.
H.B. 324 passed with 161-41 votes.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where it did pass in the agriculture committee last session.