Review shows bird flu control strategies ‘not working’

Gaps in data highlight potential for silent spread

The Pirbright Institute

 

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Credit: The Pirbright Institute

A review of sustained mammal-to-mammal bird flu transmission in diverse species, led by The Pirbright Institute, shows global control strategies are not working.

Writing in Nature, researchers analysed whether outbreaks in European fur farms, South American marine mammals and United States dairy cattle raise questions about whether humans are next. Led by zoonotic influenza specialist Dr Thomas Peacock, the scientists evaluated how recent changes in the ecology and molecular evolution of H5N1 in wild and domestic birds increase opportunities for spillover to mammals.

They also weighed various evolutionary pathways that could turn the global H5N1 influenza panzootic into a human pandemic virus.

“Influenza A viruses (IAV) have caused more documented global pandemics in human history than any other pathogen. Historically, swine are considered optimal intermediary hosts that help avian influenza viruses adapt to mammals before jumping to humans,” said Dr Peacock, who investigates the drivers of the current H5N1 avian influenza panzootic. “However, the altered ecology of H5N1 has opened the door to new evolutionary pathways.”

The review highlights potential gaps in control mechanisms, including a reluctance to engage with modern vaccine and surveillance technologies and a dearth of data collection around the transmission of H5N1 between cows and to humans on US dairy farms.

Whilst previous generations of US cattle producers had eradicated foot-and-mouth disease by rapidly sharing epidemiological data, the authors say months of missing data is leaving researchers, veterinarians, and policy makers in the dark.

“H5N1 is a reportable disease in poultry, but not mammals, in the US. The US Department of Agriculture requires H5N1 testing only in lactating cattle prior to interstate movement,” said Dr Peacock.

Current practices for H5N1 testing in wildlife focus on carcasses, not monitoring animals whilst alive, the paper notes, providing opportunities for variants of H5N1 to spread silently undetected.

“What keeps scientists up at night is the possibility of unseen chains of transmission silently spreading through farm worker barracks, swine barns, or developing countries, evolving under the radar because testing criteria are narrow, government authorities are feared, or resources are thin.”

An evolutionary process of “genomic reassortment” in viruses with segmented genomes is driving the global panzootic outbreak. When two or more viruses co-infect a single host, they can swap entire segments during genome replication to create novel hybrids.

The reassortment between H5N8 and low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) viruses that generated the panzootic H5N1 virus in the Americas is believed to have occurred in Europe or central Asia around 2020, infecting South American marine mammals and US dairy cattle.

The writers say the prospect of H5N1 becoming continually present in Europe and the Americas is a turning point for High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI).

“New control strategies are needed, including vaccination. Influenza vaccines are licensed for poultry that reduce disease burden, but do not prevent infection and have varying degrees of success.”

Stocks of H5 vaccine that are antigenically related to circulating viruses are available and could be produced at scale using mRNA platforms if H5N1 begins spreading in humans, the authors note.

“The severity of a future H5N1 pandemic remains unclear. Recent human infections with H5N1 have a substantially lower case fatality rate compared to prior H5N1 outbreak in Asia, where half of people with reported infections died. The lack of severity in US cases may be due to infection through the eye, rather than through viral pneumonia in the lung.”

Older people appear to have partial immunity to H5N1 due to childhood exposure, whereas younger people born since the 1968 H3N2 pandemic may be more susceptible to severe disease in a H5N1 pandemic.

Dr Peacock’s work is funded by UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) via the Pirbright Institute’s Strategic Programme Grants (ISPGs)  and the UK Medical Research Council / Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs FluTrailMap One Health consortium, and the BBSRC/DEFRA ‘FluTrailMap’ consortium.

Read the Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08054-z

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08054-z

 

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-08054-z 

Method of Research

Literature review

Article Title

The global H5N1 panzootic in mammals

Article Publication Date

24-Sep-2024

Scrap law making schools serve meat, urges Labour donor

Brian Wheeler
BBC Politics
Reporting fromLabour conference, Liverpool

PA Media


Major Labour donor Dale Vince says he wants to talk to the new government about scrapping compulsory meat and dairy in school meals in England.

The green entrepreneur, who has donated more than £5m to Labour, says vegan meals are healthier and better for the environment.

He is campaigning for an end to all farming of animals, which he says is now the biggest driver of the climate crisis.

He told a fringe meeting at Labour's conference that his company, Devil's Kitchen, already supplies vegan food to "one in four" primary schools.

Farmers rebel against plant-based council plan

I’ve not lobbied Labour over Just Stop Oil - donor

But he added: "There are schools which want to go further. They don't want meat and dairy on the menu perhaps every day of the week or even at all.

"But it is the law of the land. I am hoping to have a conversation with the new government to encourage them to change the law."

Government guidance issued to schools in England says they must serve a "wide range of foods across the week".

This must include fresh fruit and vegetables, some milk and dairy and "a portion of meat or poultry on three or more days each week".

Mr Vince said it was now clear that a vegan diet was healthier than eating meat and dairy products, adding: "We shouldn't be forcing these unhealthy products on to our kids."

He told the meeting he also planned to talk to the education secretary about incorporating "climate and sustainability" into the primary school curriculum.

He denied he was against farmers, insisting that he did not want to kill the industry but allow it to be "reborn".

"[Farmers] have to be part of the move to net zero, they have to move away from agriculture, we know that the science tells us that - and they already grow grass to feed to animals."


Dale Vince is publicising his campaign to end animal farming at the Labour conference


Mr Vince has donated more than £5m to Labour through his company Ecotricity since Sir Keir Starmer became leader in 2020.

Asked after the meeting if he planned to make further donations, he said: "It's not the kind of thing I have a plan for. I just do it when I can and when I think they need it, which is usually when there is an election on."

The businessman said he had stopped funding activist group Just Stop Oil, after Sir Keir came under attack over it.

"I eventually felt it was unhelpful, which was why I stopped funding Just Stop Oil and began focusing on stopping the Tories," he said.

Chickens Lack the Most Basic Legal Protection

Vicky Bond

 September 23, 2024
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Image: Sue Coe.

All illustrations by Sue Coe.

Chickens are the most populous bird on Earth and are widely considered among the most abused animals on the planet. Despite their ability to think and feel, billions of chickens are raised and killed for food each year and subjected to some of the worst living and slaughter conditions imaginable to meet the increasing demand for meat worldwide.

Chickens are complex social and emotional beings. Research indicates that chickens are not simple-minded creatures, which is an assumption many make.

“[S]cientists have learned that this bird can be deceptive and cunning, that… [they possess] communication skills on par with those of some primates and that… [they use] sophisticated signals to convey… [their] intentions,” according to the Scientific American. “When making decisions, the chicken takes into account… [their] own prior experience and knowledge surrounding the situation. … [Chickens] can solve complex problems and [empathize] with individuals… [who] are in danger.”

Miserable Lives Trapped in Factory Farms

A 2019 analysis by Sentience Institute estimated that 99 percent of all birds raised for food spend their lives trapped in factory farms. Broiler chickens—the industry term for birds raised for meat—suffer through harrowing living conditions every day of their short lives.

Most of these chickens are born in industrial hatcheries, surrounded by bright lights and machines. The baby birds never meet their mothers—the industry separates unhatched chicks from mother hens as soon as the eggs are laid. Soon after hatching, these birds are packed into cramped crates and shipped to factory farms.

Once at the factory farm, the chickens suffer extreme stress from overcrowding. Sometimes, hundreds of thousands of birds are kept in a single shed. The birds endure filthy living conditions, surrounded by their waste. These dirty, crowded environments are notorious for breeding and spreading zoonotic diseases, such as bird flu, which threaten the well-being of humans and chickens alike.

The meat industry breeds chickens to grow at an unnatural rate to yield the biggest profits. This high speed of growth often results in painful health problems for them, including skeletal disorders, skin burns, lesions of the foot pad, and heart attacks. These birds are bred to grow so fast that their legs often lack the strength to carry their heavy bodies—some struggle even to walk or stand. They often experience painful lameness as a result of this.

Most chickens are sent to slaughter at less than two months old. Despite their large size, they’re ultimately still babies at the time of their death.

Decompression. Image: Sue Coe.

Chickens Are Killed Inhumanely

Chickens face a grisly end to their short and unnatural lives on industrial farms. We cannot know for sure if chickens are aware they are going to be slaughtered, but we can be certain that they experience fear and pain as they are shackled upside down and surrounded by the smell of death.

After a stressful journey to the slaughterhouse trapped in cramped crates, workers remove the birds and shackle them upside down by their feet during a process known as live-shackle slaughter. In this process—one of the standard methods of slaughtering chickens—many birds flap their wings in terror and endure broken bones and other injuries.

The birds move along an automated line and are immersed in a pool of electrified water intended to leave them unconscious, but this system often does not work as planned. Evidence reveals that the stunning method the poultry industry uses does not consistently render birds unconscious. More than half a million chickens drowned in scalding tanks in 2019, according to distressing figures from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Shortly after stunning, a sharp blade slits their throats to allow them to bleed out.

Finally, the chickensʼ bodies are submerged in boiling water to loosen the feathers from their skin before a de-feathering machine plucks them entirely. If a chicken is not adequately stunned or bled out before entering the scalding tank, she will spend her final moments being boiled alive.

The USDA inspectors found extensive violations during their inspection of slaughterhouses in 2021. These included birds who evaded slaughter being boiled alive in the de-feathering phase, as well as live birds being left among the dead, along with other horrifying abuses.

The Profit Motive: Choosing Cruelty Over Care

Researchers have found that water baths with lower electrical frequenciesare more effective at stunning birds. However, they can sometimes damage carcasses, making the meat unsuitable for sale.

These low-frequency shocks can induce spasms during the stunning process, resulting in fractured limbs and ruptured blood vessels, which reduces the birds’ economic value to the industry.

Researchers believe that, despite these injuries, low-frequency water baths reduce the overall suffering of birds during the slaughter process because they are more likely to stun the birds successfully. However, most slaughter facilities still opt for less effective stunning methods due to concerns about meat quality.

Because the poultry industry values profit over welfare, countless birds used for their flesh suffer a horrible death while sometimes fully conscious. And since poultry are excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, virtually no legislation ensures the humane slaughter of chickens. A 2016 HuffPost articlestated, “If just 1 percent of chickens raised each year in the U.S. are not effectively stunned, it means roughly 90 million animals are experiencing a violent and painful death.”

In Europe, controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) is becoming a more prevalent method of slaughter. This approach involves gassing the birds into unconsciousness. CAS is considered more humane and a much less stressful experience for the birds since they can be stunned without shackling.

Spent Hen. Image: Sue Coe.

Egg-Laying Hens Are Cruelly Killed, Too

Many people are unaware that egg-laying hens ultimately meet a similar fate. Once their egg production declines, they are considered useless to the industry and sent to slaughter.

Male chicks born into the egg industry suffer one of the darkest fates of all animals used in our modern food system. As the eggs hatch, workers place birds on a conveyor belt to be “sexed.” Female chicks are set aside to be shipped off to egg facilities, but male chicks have no economic use in the industry.

In most hatcheries, workers toss male chicks into macerating machines where they are ground alive.

Consumer Awareness and Pressure Helps Reduce Animal Cruelty

Fast-food chains use chicken suppliers that practice live-shackle slaughter. McDonald’s, for example, is the world’s second-largest purchaser of chicken. According to a 2021 Sentient Media report, the birds slaughtered for McDonald’s meals have continued to face cruelty. The fast-food chain has no minimum space or natural light requirement and an inhumane slaughter process. “While McDonald’s may have tried to address the growing demand for better animal welfare, the measures have been largely inadequate,” the report stated.

Due to consumer pressure and increasing awareness, McDonald’s and hundreds of food companies have publicly agreed to the standards of the Better Chicken Commitment, which includes a transition away from cruel live-shackle slaughter.

According to a 2023 report, while some leading food companies have made progress in fulfilling these commitments, others have not been transparent about their progress toward achieving “their chicken welfare goals.”

Image: Sue Coe.

Ensuring Humane Treatment of Chickens

Chickens are intelligent and social animals capable of nuanced thoughts and feelings. However, the modern poultry industry treats them as commodities, not sentient beings.

The unnatural growth rate of chicken causes immense pain and discomfort—just to maximize industry profits. The brutal slaughter of each bird marks the end of a life of tremendous suffering. For billions of sentient birds, the slaughterhouse is an excruciating end to a miserable and short life trapped in our broken food system.

Chickens deserve better than this horrific violence. Concerned consumers can call on the chicken industry to end this cruelty and adopt better industry standards to ensure improved treatment of these birds.

 

Vicky Bond is a veterinary surgeon, animal welfare scientist, and the president of The Humane League.

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