One year ago this month, Arizona experienced what would become the largest animal disease outbreak in the state’s history. Between May 16 and June 7, 2025, 6.3 million birds were killed across seven locations centering on Hickman’s Family Farms following the discovery of highly pathogenic avian influenza. As we mark this grim anniversary, new documents slowly being released through Animal Outlook’s Freedom of Information request are beginning to reveal the staggering scale of animal suffering and taxpayer expense that the headlines barely touched.
The story that dominated news coverage last spring focused on lost livelihoods and the dissolution of an 81-year-old family business. These are real hardships that deserve attention. But in all that coverage, one detail remained conspicuously absent: the precise nature of how 6.3 million birds actually died.
Public records haven’t yet revealed the exact depopulation method used, but the documents we’ve obtained paint a troubling picture. Early in the outbreak, state veterinarians were making inquiries about the national veterinary stockpile of CO2 trailers and carts. Other records describe workers suffering from heat exhaustion during the operation. These details are consistent with “ventilation shutdown plus,” the most common method of mass depopulation. It involves sealing birds inside barns and shutting off ventilation, causing them to die slowly from heat stress and suffocation over the course of hours. In essence, baking them alive.
These are details no one seems willing to discuss publicly, yet they represent the reality for millions of individual animals whose deaths we’re still not allowed to fully understand.
The scale of the response was massive. According to public records, 350 people worked on the depopulation effort, with the majority being contractors along with staff from the Arizona Department of Agriculture and USDA. The Arizona National Guard was even included in discussions about the response.
The public records don’t yet account for indemnity payments to the company or the full scope of cleanup expenses, which we calculated at the time could reach up to $100 million.
What happened at Hickman’s is no longer an unforeseeable crisis but a predictable consequence of how we raise animals for food. The cost of cleaning up industrial animal agriculture’s mess is a textbook example of corporate welfarism, where private companies profit from intensive production systems while taxpayers shoulder the burden when things inevitably go wrong.
If taxpayers are going to continue compensating producers for disease outbreaks, we should require something in return. Industrial facilities should be required to produce detailed written plans explaining exactly how they intend to kill their birds as quickly and humanely as possible should an infection occur—and these plans should be a prerequisite for receiving any compensation from taxpayers. Incentivizing producers to plan ahead would not only improve animal welfare during these mass killings but also speed up response times to prevent further viral spread to other facilities and potentially to humans.
As more records are released to us in the coming weeks and months, we hope the true cost to taxpayers will finally come to light. More importantly, we hope to learn the precise details of how these birds died—information that the public has a right to know, especially when footing the bill for an outbreak of this magnitude.
The industrial animal agriculture system creates the perfect conditions for disease outbreaks like this one: millions of genetically similar birds confined in close quarters, creating opportunities for pathogens to spread rapidly and mutate. When outbreaks occur, the response is mass killing on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend, followed by a cleanup funded largely by taxpayers. Yet the system that generates these predictable crises continues unchanged.
These animals, their suffering, and the public cost of this disaster deserve more than to be footnotes in a story about the end of a family business. The public deserves the full truth about what happened at Hickman’s, what it cost, and what it means for the future of animal agriculture in Arizona and beyond.