A pandemic is ravaging the United States. From Maine to Wyoming, contagious bird flu has swept across farms and forests, killing chickens, ducks, turkeys and more than 40 varieties of wild birds. This pandemic has been particularly hard on poultry farmers, who have lost more than 24 million chickens and turkeys to this new strain of avian influenza. That is nearly 4 percent of all the domestic chickens and turkeys in the nation. So it is little wonder the price of chicken meat has doubled from a year ago while the costs of chicken eggs have hit an all-time high.

Poultry farmers are especially concerned about this bird flu outbreak. A similar outbreak in 2015 was deemed the most expensive animal health disaster in U.S. history after an influenza virus killed 50 billion birds across 15 states. The 2015 pandemic cost the federal government nearly $1 billion. A repeat of this disaster would be devastating, especially since farmers are already being hurt by runaway inflation and rising gasoline prices.

Iowa and Minnesota have been hit particularly hard, with over half of the bird flu-related chicken and turkey deaths occurring in these two states. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a disaster proclamation for Taylor County last month to combat the pandemic, allowing state agencies to track and monitor the disease. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz is offering relief funds for its poultry farmers who are being forced to kill off entire flocks.

Yet poultry experts are pessimistic about the prospect of the disease being contained. Zoos have put their ostriches and penguins on lockdown. Still, the latest protein inflation report from Evercore isi predicts that chicken breasts will cost 70 percent more this year than last year. Since food, in general, is only expected to cost 10 percent more, the rising chicken prices are not solely due to inflation. Instead, they are due to inflation, grain shortages and bird flu.

Money printing, wars, droughts and bird flu have created a perfect storm of conditions to drive food prices higher; yet this storm was prophesied. Herbert W. Armstrong explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy that Americans and Britons are descended from the Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim. That means Bible prophecies about Manasseh and Ephraim apply to the modern-day inhabitants of the United States and the British Commonwealth.

In Deuteronomy 28, the Bible records the curses that Moses said would come upon Manasseh and Ephraim if they turned away from God’s law. Among these curses are pandemics (verses 21-22), droughts (verses 23-24), military defeats (verse 25) and rising debt problems (verses 43-44). This same chapter says, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, The Lord Thy God; Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed” (verses 58-61).

God punished the Egyptians by sending a plague of pestilence against their livestock. He is doing the same thing to America today. Nearly 20 percent of the chickens and turkeys in Iowa have already died in what may soon become the most expensive animal health disaster in U.S. history. Poultry experts expect the plague to worsen.

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota recommends that people take down their bird feeders to keep songbirds from spreading disease between cities, towns and farms. Extreme quarantine measures may temporarily stop the spread of this particular strand of bird flu, but ultimately, it is God who blesses both people and livestock with good health. America is being cursed with “every sickness, and every plague” because Americans have refused to “observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book.”

Unless America rectifies this situation, dying chickens and rising egg prices will only be part of much worse curses.

For more information on what the Bible says about famine and disease in the end time, please read our free booklet The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.