[Eggs] Why is it so difficult to contain the Bird Flu?

[Tiangou]

Sounds like what we need is a vaccine.

If only the government had one...

And the willingness to use it.

...

https://www.newsweek.com/why-us-not-vacc...lu-2010511

"The only reason that we are not vaccinating poultry against bird flu is because the chicken companies don't want to," deCoriolis said. "Industrial meat companies rely on export markets for their business model, and they simply don't want to lose those export markets."

The National Chicken Council has openly cited this concern. In 2023, its senior vice president of communications told CNN that protecting trade relationships was a primary reason for opposing vaccination...

The USDA acknowledges these challenges, too. "A national vaccination strategy includes challenges for domestic implementation, including the cost and logistics of an effective national strategy, the development of appropriate surveillance programs, and minimizing potential trade ramifications," a spokesperson told Newsweek.

Despite these concerns, critics argue that the economic risks are being prioritized over public health.

"The USDA is currently subsidizing chicken companies when they have outbreaks," deCoriolis said.

"American taxpayers have spent billions in the last two years bailing out chicken and turkey companies that have had outbreaks. If they don't vaccinate, they keep their export market; if they have a bird flu outbreak, they get a bailout."

Is this not the perfect snapshot of today's America? Our government, under the influence of lobbyists, is spending millions on bailouts and billions on the indirect consequences of the bailouts, culling millions of birds, driving up consumer prices, and targeting "waste" by firing the regulators.

[Black]

DewGuy wrote:
I imagine that this is one of the sources of spread.



Also last year or maybe the year before there was a story going around telling people not to provide food or drink for wild birds as it was a source of spreading bird flu.

You may be thinking of 2021, the summer of the "mystery illness" which is now considered to have been cicada related. There has generally been no official advisement to stop feeding or watering wild birds this year, unless one also keeps poultry.

Also-- your pic shows Passerines, which have only very rarely been found to harbor H5N1, usually attributable to scavenging infected poultry carasses.

[DewGuy]

Black wrote:
[quote=DewGuy]
I imagine that this is one of the sources of spread.



Also last year or maybe the year before there was a story going around telling people not to provide food or drink for wild birds as it was a source of spreading bird flu.

You may be thinking of 2021, the summer of the "mystery illness" which is now considered to have been cicada related. There has generally been no official advisement to stop feeding or watering wild birds this year, unless one also keeps poultry.
That's probably what it was. My memory isn't very reliable anymore.

[PeterB]

What I don't think has been mentioned here so far:

With all these cases of avian flu, it just becomes a matter of time until it makes an antigenic shift/drift and becomes transmissible not just from birds-to-human, but human-to-human.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00245-6

[Speedy]

We raise a lot of turkeys in my state. As Diana states, it’s difficult to keep the infection away from the flocks. They close up the entire building where turkeys are raised including filtering the air. Yet outbreaks continue to happen. Contaminated feed, carrying in contaminates on clothing and gear, machines contaminated, etc. Not an easy problem to solve except with vaccines. Stop subsidizing the culling of flocks and suddenly vaccinations won’t seem like such a bad idea.

[JoeH]

Tiangou wrote:
Sounds like what we need is a vaccine.

If only the government had one...

And the willingness to use it.

...

https://www.newsweek.com/why-us-not-vacc...lu-2010511

"The only reason that we are not vaccinating poultry against bird flu is because the chicken companies don't want to," deCoriolis said. "Industrial meat companies rely on export markets for their business model, and they simply don't want to lose those export markets."

The National Chicken Council has openly cited this concern. In 2023, its senior vice president of communications told CNN that protecting trade relationships was a primary reason for opposing vaccination...

The USDA acknowledges these challenges, too. "A national vaccination strategy includes challenges for domestic implementation, including the cost and logistics of an effective national strategy, the development of appropriate surveillance programs, and minimizing potential trade ramifications," a spokesperson told Newsweek.

Despite these concerns, critics argue that the economic risks are being prioritized over public health.

"The USDA is currently subsidizing chicken companies when they have outbreaks," deCoriolis said.

"American taxpayers have spent billions in the last two years bailing out chicken and turkey companies that have had outbreaks. If they don't vaccinate, they keep their export market; if they have a bird flu outbreak, they get a bailout."

Is this not the perfect snapshot of today's America? Our government, under the influence of lobbyists, is spending millions on bailouts and billions on the indirect consequences of the bailouts, culling millions of birds, driving up consumer prices, and targeting "waste" by firing the regulators.

Well, besides the companies apparently not wanting to use it, the avian flu vaccines so far are good against single strains of the virus. Just like influenza virus for humans, there are multiple strains out there and they keep mutating into new strains. A vaccine may not protect against the new strain at all.