Mar 12, 2025 06:07 PM
Egg industry scrambling: Today’s Neros fiddle as the bird flu crisis deepens while politicians and ideologues ignore solutions to the crisis
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2025/...he-crisis/
EXCERPTS: A bulldozer belches a black cloud of exhaust as the engine revs. A mound of dead chickens flops into a hole in the earth.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI caused by the H5N1 virus) is now threatening domestic wild bird flocks. Infection spreads fast, and affected birds die within days, suffering from respiratory, neurological and digestive distress. In the latest U.S. outbreak over 166 million domestic chickens have died from disease or been culled in infected flocks, 280 million worldwide.
The result has been a sharp increaase in egg and meat chicken prices, with impacts to certainly affect turkey populations as well. In many places, limits are in place on eggs to reduce hoarding. Whether locked out by price or availability, many of the poorest have lost access to a nutritious food staple entirely.
Here’s the most challenging issue: the economic consequences will not be short lived. As flocks are euthanized or die from infectious disease, replacement birds require half a year to mature to egg laying age. That is, if egg producers can find chicks to grow, as millions of replacements are needed, and even hatcheries have been affected.
And with every subsequent infection the odds of zoonotic jumps to humans, livestock and domestic animals increase. We stand a mutation, an exposure, and an ambitious traveling salesman away from the next economically disastrous and deadly pandemic.
But it does not have to be this way. There are several strategies to slow and perhaps stop HPAI, some demonstrated effective over 14 years ago. However, due to a rejection of technology, birds will continue to die, and consumers will endure higher costs and less access to eggs.
One brilliant and still unapplied approach to curbing HPAI was published in 2011. A joint effort between The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge created chickens that could become infected with HCAI, but could not transmit the virus. These birds were an epidemiological dead end, cutting off the possibility of passing along the deadly disease.
The technology is brilliant, but simple. [...] And it works. The infected chickens died, but other chickens sharing the same highly contagious environment did not develop symptoms. If all domestic poultry were engineered to contain this molecular viral decoy, it would ensure that infections never progressed beyond the first unfortunately infected bird.
But regulatory overkill and the chilling environment stirred by anti-biotechnology activist rejectionist block this 14-year-old solution from being deployed... (MORE - missing details)
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Ironically, it seems to have been the switch to humane free-range conditions that started exposing commercial chickens to infected wild birds, thus maintaining this never-ending scourge of avian flu.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2025/...he-crisis/
EXCERPTS: A bulldozer belches a black cloud of exhaust as the engine revs. A mound of dead chickens flops into a hole in the earth.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI caused by the H5N1 virus) is now threatening domestic wild bird flocks. Infection spreads fast, and affected birds die within days, suffering from respiratory, neurological and digestive distress. In the latest U.S. outbreak over 166 million domestic chickens have died from disease or been culled in infected flocks, 280 million worldwide.
The result has been a sharp increaase in egg and meat chicken prices, with impacts to certainly affect turkey populations as well. In many places, limits are in place on eggs to reduce hoarding. Whether locked out by price or availability, many of the poorest have lost access to a nutritious food staple entirely.
Here’s the most challenging issue: the economic consequences will not be short lived. As flocks are euthanized or die from infectious disease, replacement birds require half a year to mature to egg laying age. That is, if egg producers can find chicks to grow, as millions of replacements are needed, and even hatcheries have been affected.
And with every subsequent infection the odds of zoonotic jumps to humans, livestock and domestic animals increase. We stand a mutation, an exposure, and an ambitious traveling salesman away from the next economically disastrous and deadly pandemic.
But it does not have to be this way. There are several strategies to slow and perhaps stop HPAI, some demonstrated effective over 14 years ago. However, due to a rejection of technology, birds will continue to die, and consumers will endure higher costs and less access to eggs.
One brilliant and still unapplied approach to curbing HPAI was published in 2011. A joint effort between The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge created chickens that could become infected with HCAI, but could not transmit the virus. These birds were an epidemiological dead end, cutting off the possibility of passing along the deadly disease.
The technology is brilliant, but simple. [...] And it works. The infected chickens died, but other chickens sharing the same highly contagious environment did not develop symptoms. If all domestic poultry were engineered to contain this molecular viral decoy, it would ensure that infections never progressed beyond the first unfortunately infected bird.
But regulatory overkill and the chilling environment stirred by anti-biotechnology activist rejectionist block this 14-year-old solution from being deployed... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ironically, it seems to have been the switch to humane free-range conditions that started exposing commercial chickens to infected wild birds, thus maintaining this never-ending scourge of avian flu.