TUESDAY, Feb. 18, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted conditional approval for a new bird flu vaccine for poultry. This new avian flu vaccine, developed by New Jersey-based Zoetis, was approved last week after meeting safety and efficacy standards.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is expected “in the coming days” to announce a new strategy for fighting the bird flu outbreak.

The US Department of Agriculture last week issued a conditional license for an avian flu vaccine for use in chickens, as an outbreak of a newer variant ravages poultry flocks, contributing to the sky high price of eggs.

Over the last 30 days, 151 flocks have been confirmed to have avian flu, affecting more than 23 million birds, according to the Animal Planet Health Inspection Service part of the USDA. Dr. Paul Offit, of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee, says people could also become sick.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given a conditional approval to Zoetis to use its bird flu vaccine in poultry, the animal healthcare company said on Friday.

The company, Zoetis, said this license was granted on the “demonstration of safety, purity, and reasonable expectation of efficacy."

The vaccine from Zoetis, Avian Influenza Vaccine, H5N2 Subtype, Killed Virus, is for poultry and has been demonstrated to be safe, pure, and to have a reasonable expectation of efficacy

In the past three years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says about 150 million birds died across the country due to the virus. This month, the USDA granted a conditional license to Zoetis for its Avian Influenza Vaccine.