Subscribers are directed to the recent ProPublica article on highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).  The incisive report was based on interviews with prominent poultry health professionals and incorporated an analysis of available redacted epidemiologic data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

EGG-NEWS has long maintained that HPAI can be introduced onto farms by virus entrained on windborne dust and dander thereby invalidating even the most extreme structural and operational biosecurity.

USDA policy appears to be predicated on two principles:

• That the use of vaccination against HPAI in high-risk areas for egg production flocks would result in the collapse of U.S. exports.  This contention is supported by a well-organized lobby exerting pressure on the USDA through the Congressional broiler caucus.  Accordingly, pseudo-scientific arguments are advanced deprecating vaccination which has proven to be an effective method of prevention when combined with high levels of biosecurity.  The USDA should have predicted the persistence and severity of HPAI and actively engaged with trading partners to accept limited and controlled vaccination with appropriate surveillance following the principles of the World Organization of Animal Health.

• The USDA has studiously avoided conducting meaningful epidemiologic studies that may initially have confirmed that the infection was endemic with seasonal dissemination of virus by migratory and now resident free-living birds.  It would appear that the USDA functions with the earnest hope that the infection will simply “go away” as it did at the end of the 2015 epornitic.  Unfortunately, this presumption has been disproved by the ongoing seasonal epornitic since 2022.  Despite having qualified personnel and financial resources USDA has failed to conduct meaningful epidemiologic studies to identify risk factors and to establish that the infection can be transmitted by wind as has been documented in a number of peer-reviewed articles. Collectively the literature advances evidence of aerogenous transmission and the effectiveness of controlled vaccination.

The USDA conducted superficial epidemiologic studies in 2022 involving telephone surveys using a standard format administered months after outbreaks.  All that emerged from the inadequate investigations was that proximity to free standing water and wetlands and the presence of wild birds were risk factors.

Absent a clear policy on vaccination and reliance on the obviously imperfect protection afford by biosecurity, the U.S. industry will be confronted with ongoing seasonal outbreaks.

The longer that the epornitic persist, the greater will be the risk of emergence of a zoonotic strain of avian influenza.  Mutations in the genome of  Clade 2.3.4.4b avian influenza virus strain H5N1 have occurred resulting in infection of dairy herds and marine mammals.  The World Health Organization regards avian influenza as a potential pandemic virus and accordingly the greater the efficiency of suppression infection through vaccination, the lower will be the risk of a significant public health concern.

If all costs as a result of infection are takin into consideration, agriculture economists guiding policymakers should not only consider the expense of depopulation and indemnity but should include the cost to consumers. Escalation in the price of eggs occurs following seasonal outbreaks due to a disturbance in the supply to demand equilibrium.  Costs to consumers should reflect consumption of seven billion dozen in shell and liquid form annually. Escalation in wholesale and shelf prices over seasonal values as a result of HPAI have amounted to $2 to $4 per dozen for extensive periods since 2022.

The so-called multipronged program to combat HPAI announced by secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is at best more of the same and at worst a delaying tactic. Facile and unhelpful comments by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  Secretary of Health and Human Services to simply allow infected flocks to die in the hope of establishing resistant strain among the five percent survivors of an outbreak belies the reality that commercial chickens are hybrids. In any event failure to control HPAI by USDA would absolutely result in a termination of exports.

If the USDA knuckles down to reality and accepts scientific fact and refrains from sophistic misinterpretation of the literature to suit a non-vaccination policy the industry would be more secure and all stakeholders would benefit.  There is apparently a draft policy on vaccination that has had limited circulation but neither the UEP nor the AVEP, representing poultry health professionals has received a copy for comment.

The bottom line for the USDA is that H5 HPAI is endemic, is carried by migratory birds, is disseminated among other routes by air movement and is potentially zoonotic.  Further intransigence cannot be tolerated since a windborne endemic disease with seasonal reintroduction of virus by wild birds cannot be eradicated. By depopulation. The USDA and those opposing avian influenza vaccination should recognize that HPAI is effectively “the Newcastle disease of the 2020s”.  This infection was effectively suppressed, controlled and effectively eradicated in commercial poultry production worldwide through application of vaccination.