A quarter of a billion for farmers for slaughtering animals. Too easy money?

When a farmer has to cull animals that have fallen ill with bird flu, African swine fever or other diseases specified by law , he will receive compensation from the State Treasury for the slaughtered herd. This has recently cost taxpayers a lot.

As "Rzeczpospolita" has learned, the State Treasury paid farmers last year: PLN 169 million in connection with bird flu (when in the year before the pandemic it was only PLN 1.2 million), PLN 48 million due to Newcastle disease (in 2019 this disease did not occur in Poland). Last year, PLN 25 million was also paid for the culling of pig herds due to ASF. Before the pandemic, it was almost half as much, i.e. PLN 14 million.

Bird flu costs

The regulations are intended to help farmers fight diseases and prevent them from being hidden so they don't spread. The problem begins when there are many disease outbreaks. We don't know yet how much compensation Poland has paid out so far in 2025, but there have already been 70% more cases of bird flu than in the whole of last year, even though it's only June. So we can estimate that the amount will be correspondingly higher.

While last year saw 50 outbreaks of bird flu in poultry, and a total of 3.2 million animals were culled, this year around 7 million birds have already been culled in 85 flu outbreaks. Meanwhile, in much larger Germany, there were only nine cases, and in Italy – 21, reports the Chief Veterinary Officer.

The situation has developed to such an extent that in early April the European Commission expressed its "deep concern", adding that Poland is not doing enough to limit the occurrence of avian influenza infections in poultry. And this is no longer just a national issue, because the development of this highly pathogenic disease, which birds can catch even from the feathers of flying flocks, may threaten the epizootic safety of the entire common European market .

How much is it?

One of the reasons why Polish producers are not motivated to protect their flocks from influenza, as indicated by economists, among others, is the fact that bird flu means a problem for poultry producers, but not bankruptcy. As one of the economists who analyzed the financial documents of poultry producers told us, the amounts of compensation for individual companies can reach tens of millions of złoty. Compensation paid from the state budget can weaken the motivation to protect flocks.

The Ministry of Agriculture sees this and announces changes. Poultry producers must take preventive measures. Minister of Agriculture Czesław Siekierski has announced since April that he wants to impose greater requirements on producers. - If they do not meet them, we will act to increase the producers' share in bearing the costs of losses related to the disposal of such a large group of animals. These are huge losses that translate into the state's losses in foreign trade. But also losses of farmers - he said during a press conference. During a meeting with journalists at the end of May, the minister confirmed that the work is ongoing.

The losses are large, because the scale of poultry production in Poland is large. For example, the latest 85th outbreak of bird flu was detected on May 2nd in a farm in Kierzenko breeding 20.5 thousand geese and slaughter hens. A few days earlier, bird flu attacked a ten times larger farm, which kept 315.5 thousand laying hens in Błociszewo.

Peace for a while

In the meantime, we have peace – the last bird flu outbreaks have been eliminated, and there have been no new cases for over a month. On June 6, the Chief Veterinary Officer submitted a declaration to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) resulting from the completion of procedures for eliminating bird flu outbreaks in poultry detected in the territory of the Republic of Poland between October 7, 2024 and May 2, 2025.