Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the best health officer of the nation, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird fluoreses that American poultry farms tackles. Let the virus tear.
Instead of cleaning up birds when the infection is discovered, farmers may “consider the possibility to let the herd run so that we can identify the birds and retain the birds that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy recently said on Fox News.
He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.
Mr. Kennedy has no jurisdiction about farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agricultural secretary, has also expressed support for the idea.
“There are some farmers who are there who are willing to really try this on a pilot while we build the safe circumference around them to see if there is a way ahead with immunity,” Mrs. Rollins told Fox News last month.
Yet veterinary scientists said that the virus would have poultry herds wipe, would be inhumane and dangerous and would have enormous economic consequences.
“That is really a terrible idea, for one of a number of reasons,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former vet for Kansas.
Since January 2022, more than 1,600 outbreaks have been reported on farms and herds in the back garden, which occur in every state. More than 166 million birds have been hit.
Each infection is another chance for the virus, called H5N1, to evolve to a more virulent form. Geneticists have followed his mutations closely; Until now, the virus has not developed the ability to spread among people.
But if H5N1 could go through a swarm of five million birds, “that is literally five million opportunities for that virus to replicate or mutate,” said Dr. Hansen.
Large numbers of infected birds are likely to transfer enormous amounts of the virus, bringing agricultural workers and other animals with a high risk.
“So now you prepare yourself for bad things,” said Dr. Hansen. “It's a recipe for a disaster.”
Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that Mr. Kennedy's comments were aimed at protecting people “against the most dangerous version of the current bird flu, found in chickens.”
“Culling brings people with the highest risk of exposure, so secretary Kennedy and NIH want to limit the Culling activities,” she said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “Culling is not the solution.”
In her plan to combat bird flu, Mrs. Rollins advised to strengthen bio -safety on farms – to prevent the virus from entering their building, or to stop its spread with strict cleaning and use of protective equipment.
But that is a long -term solution. The USDA starts those efforts in just ten states.
The virus shot for the first time under wild birds, which transfer it to household poultry and various mammals. Now a single infected duck that flies over the head can drop droppings on a farm where a chicken or turkey can take it.
Grown poultry has a weak immune system and are under enormous environmental stress, often brought together in wire cages or poorly ventilated barns. Within a day, H5N1 to a third of a herd can get sick.
Infected birds can develop severe respiratory symptoms, diarrhea, tremors and turning their necks and produce deformed or fragile eggs. Many die for breath. (Some birds suddenly die without showing symptoms.)
The speed with which infected birds collapse has been cited as a reason that civil servants believe that eggs are safe for consumption. Most sick birds die before they can lay an egg, or are so visibly sick that it is easy to filter them out.
Bird farmers call the authorities as soon as they see the signs of illness or death. If the tests become positive for bird flu, they are reimbursed for killing the rest of the herd before the virus spreads further.
If farmers would have the virus come across the farm instead, “these infections would cause very painful deaths in almost 100 percent of the chickens and turkeys,” Dr. David Swayne, a vet for poultry who worked at the USDA for almost 30 years.
The result would be “inhumane, resulting in an unacceptable crisis for animal welfare,” he added. (Methods to clear birds can also be cruel, but are generally faster in general.)
Farmers who clear infected herds must also clean the building and pass on audits before they are displayed again. They often want to solve the crisis quickly. Simply taking a step back would have serious financial consequences.
The strategy “means longer quarantine, more downtime, more lost income and increased costs,” said a USDA scientist who was not authorized to speak with the media.
Mr. Kennedy has suggested that a poultry subset can naturally be immune for bird flu. But chickens and turkeys miss the genes needed to resist the virus, experts said.
“The way we now raise birds is not much genetic variability,” said Dr. Hansen. “They are all the same bird.”
Public Health Regulations would prohibit the few birds that can survive an infection of sold. In any case, those birds can only be protected against the current version of H5N1, not other who come forward as the virus continues to evolve.
“Biology and immunology don't work that way,” says Dr. Keith Poulsen, the director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Wisconsin.
By spreading the virus would probably also lead to trade embargos against poultry from the United States, he added: “There is an enormous economic loss immediately.”
In one interview with Fox News, Mr. Kennedy also suggested that the virus “does not seem to harm wild birds – they have some kind of immunity.”
Although ducks and shorebirds may not show any symptoms, H5N1 has killed birds of prey, water birds, Sand Hill -faucets and snow geese, in addition to many other species.
