You know how COVID-19 started spreading quietly in 2019, but no one knew it yet? Well, bird flu is doing the exact opposite. It’s giving us countless warning signs that we could be in the early days of a growing crisis, and yet we are still acting blissfully unaware. Since 2022, a bird flu pandemic has caused the deaths of over 100 million birds in the U.S. poultry industry and almost half a billion farmed birds around the world.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus has now been confirmed on 172 dairy farms in 13 U.S. states, and H5N1 has infected at least 13 people in the U.S. since April — four of those cases tied to exposure to infected dairy cows. This rapid spread through the dairy industry indicates that the virus is changing.
Viruses, bacteria and other microbes constantly evolve and mutate, cycling between humans and other animals. Sometimes, they are benign, and sometimes they can kill us. In June, it was confirmed that a bird flu variant never before found in humans, H5N2, was linked to the April death of a 59-year-old man in Mexico.
Thus far, reassurances from health officials have rested on the fact that the H5N1 variant of bird flu does not spread easily from human to human, but scientists are worried that as it mutates, it could become more transmissible.
Dr. Mario Ramirez, an emergency medicine physician, current managing director at Opportunity Labs, and former acting director for Pandemic and Emerging Threats in the Office of Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently warned in an op-ed of “a critical need for a more robust and adaptable plan, especially for protecting children and schools, severely affected by the faults in the COVID-19 pandemic response.”
It’s also worth noting that eggs are used to make vaccines that protect from severe illness—but in addition to the CDC’s warning that our immune systems are not prepared for H5N1, there is concern that the reliance on eggs for flu vaccines may become a problem as more birds become ill. Furthermore, the presence of the disease could be worse than we estimate, since U.S. labs are reportedly not effectively using the more than one million bird flu tests available to them.
As we learned with COVID, it is challenging to understand where and how diseases originate, evolve and spread. This situation is further complicated when irresponsible actors hide or fail to share critical evidence. Like the tobacco industry, factory farms dislike transparency, and they don’t want to be held accountable for their imprudent conduct.
Sick animals on farms are commonly denied necessary veterinary care, and they are hardly ever tested for contagious microbes. Instead, animals with illnesses are culled and sent to slaughter to be used for human food.
The concerns around bird flu are increasing, but dairy farmers are refusing to share information with health officials. They often refuse even to test for bird flu in the first place, making it more difficult to track and prevent the disease from spreading and becoming more dangerous. Recent research shows that bird flu remains transmittable on milking equipment for at least one hour—another sign that farm workers must be given the protection they are often denied.
I feel awful for dairies and other farmers worried about losing their income and livelihoods, but withholding this information could put billions of lives at risk. Ultimately, we need to reform agriculture to mitigate disease risks and to recognize that our health is intertwined with the health and well-being of other animals and the environment.
Factory farming is a breeding ground for disease. It seeks short-term profits and creates long-term threats while abusing animals and squandering precious resources. It destroys ecosystems and biodiversity, contributing to the climate crisis and making our earth less resilient. It depends on antibiotics, vaccines and other pharmaceutical interventions to keep animals alive and growing in unhealthy conditions, spurring the evolution and emergence of new pathogens and antibiotic-resistant microbes.
Bird flu is circulating in wild and domesticated animals, and more human cases are emerging. This outbreak can serve as a canary in the coal mine, allowing us to pay attention, understand the consequences of our actions, and then make necessary adjustments. We must end factory farming and support a healthier, more resilient, sustainable plant-based food system. There’s no time to waste.
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