RFK, junior, wants to let the bird flu spread on poultry farms. Why experts are related
Health Secretary RFK, Junior has repeatedly suggested that farmers should allow bird flu to spread through herds. Experts explain why this is a dangerous idea
The chickens are standing in a herhouse on February 18, 2025 in Petluma, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
H5N1 Avian Influenza with spreading to Poultry Flock, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Junior, is advancing a new plan: Late the Virus Rip.
Kennedy recently told Fox News that by spreading highly pathogenic bird flu through herds, farmers can “identify birds, and preserve birds, which are immune for it.”
But poultry experts say, in addition to an unimaginable poultry death toll, the plan will not work.
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“No, not for the disease,” called a poultry veterinarian Rosio Cresspo in the Northern Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s crazy.”
How the bird flu affects the fields
Farmers should currently do to covers the disease before spreading infected herds. They provide financial compensation for the accused birds by the US Department of Agriculture. Matt Cockey, an immunologist and viralologist at the Poultry Science Department of Northern Carolina State University, is called by science because highly pathogenic avian influenza is fatal in itself, 90 to 100 percent chickens have died in three or four days.
This disease overwhelms birds, called Cresspo. “It is disastrous,” she says. “This is a disease that attacks every organ.”
As a result, chickens have never developed antibodies that would beat the flu back and give them the ability to avoid a second encounter with the virus – they die very quickly. This means that scientists have little to study to develop treatment or to expose some genetic secrets to resistance, called cockey. Genetic resistance in chickens and turkey “is not one thing,” they say.
What experts say
Even with Avian diseases that are working slowly than highly pathogenic bird flu, scientists have struggled to find the key to genetic resistance. Huzun Zhou, a professor at Animal Sciences at the University of California, Davis, worked on a project on Newcastle, another viral disease that is almost always fatal in poultry, but some infected birds can survive for weeks. “We did not find any magic pill,” says Zhou.
The chickens were genetic variants that allowed birds to survive for a long time with newly disease. Yet each one had a small effect, and it took a combination of hundreds of them to create a noticeable difference in survival. “This is just the nature of the disease,” says Zhou, saying that the high mortality rate of bird flu also decreases.
Kennedy’s comment is lacking knowledge about how to do poultry reproduction, Cockey is called. Chickens that provide meat and eggs are not in the reproductive population: they are products of parents’ generations that are bread resistance and bread to maximize the production of meat or eggs. Wiping the working children of these breeders will nothing to change the next generations of chickens coming under the line.
Another problem with the late-Ite-RIP strategy will be farmers’ disability to sell chicken products internationally as policy may lead importers to ban US products. As a result, the death of poultry on a large scale will also look like a great deal of today’s eggs.
“Chiki-Fil-A and Kentye fried chickens and you have all the chicken dinner, forget it,” Cresspo says, “Gone.”
How scientists are dealing with bird flu crisis
Kalinga and containing have been successful in controlling bird flu in the US since the 1980s, Cockey is called. However, currently circulating stress, however, has discovered new ways on poultry farms and thrown a wrench in the system. In the past, bird flu spread to new fields through droplets of infected migratory birds, which means that the danger was largely limited to summer and fall, when these birds passed. Now this disease is in non -jungle wild birds as well as wild mammals. The risk is throughout the year, and scientists are not fully sure how the virus is found on the fields.
“We are trying to understand: ‘Can we detect these other point sources, and can we change how we do bio -protection?”
In the long term, Zhou says, researchers are looking at genetic variations in response to poultry for vaccination. Currently, vaccines are not used, as they can keep chickens alive, they do not prevent infection. This means that infected chickens can spread the disease, even if they have been vaccinated, farmers will not be able to export products from such innovated birds. Understanding why the immune system of some chickens can give better response than others, it can help scientists develop vaccines that lead to better transmission.
Kennedy has nothing to say in America’s agricultural policies. But as new York Times Informed on TuesdayAgriculture Secretary Brook Rolins has also indicated support for the late-It-It Idea, stating that some farmers are interested in piloting strategies.
In a statement, Deputy Press Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Emily Hiliard said, “We want to keep people away from the most dangerous version of the current bird flu, which is found in chickens. Kalinga puts people at the highest risk of exposure, which is why Secretary wants to limit the activities of Kennedy and NIH.
But the viral spread leads to more viral particles in the environment, fulfills more viral spread, Crespo says.
And according to Koki, a no-coal policy will highlight the formwork for sick chickens. “You are exposing more humans to more chickens,” they say, “and just buy more lottery tickets for that epidemic stress.”
