Finnish study shows robust immune responses to H5N8 avian influenza vaccine

Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

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Finland was the first country to offer the zoonotic avian influenza A(H5N8) vaccine manufactured by Seqirus to at-risk occupational groups following the extensive clade 2.3.4.4b A(H5N1) outbreak affecting wild birds and fur farms in Finland in 2023. 

A new study published in Nature Microbiology shows that the MF59-adjuvanted A(H5N8) vaccine induced strong immune responses, including both functional antibodies and memory T-cell responses, against the vaccine virus, as well as against H5 viruses that have caused recent outbreaks in Europe and the United States.

Robust immune responses after two doses

The observational phase IV study assessed antibody responses in 39 at-risk individuals and T-cell responses in a subset of 18 participants. 

After two doses, the majority of previously unvaccinated individuals developed seroprotective antibody levels against the vaccine virus (A/Astrakhan/3212/2020, clade 2.3.4.4b). Seroprotection rates against the vaccine virus were 83% (95% CI 70–97%) by microneutralization assay (titer ≥20) and 97% (90–100%) by hemagglutination inhibition assay (titer ≥40). 
Importantly, the antibodies also recognized heterologous clade 2.3.4.4b H5 strains, including H5N1 viruses responsible for outbreaks on Finnish fur farms and dairy cattle farms in the United States.

“These findings show that two doses of the vaccine elicit strong humoral and cellular immune responses that are expected to confer protection against currently circulating clade 2.3.4.4b H5 viruses,” the authors report.

T-cell analyses further demonstrated an approximately five-fold increase in IFN-γ producing CD4⁺ T cells after the second dose, indicating activation of cellular immunity that may contribute to broader and longer-lasting protection.

A single dose strongly boosts immunity in previously vaccinated individuals

One of the most striking findings relates to participants who had received earlier H5 vaccines, many years or more than a decade earlier. In these individuals, a single dose of the current vaccine rapidly induced high levels of neutralizing antibodies, with no significant additional boost from a closely spaced second dose.

This indicates potent immunological memory and suggests that priming at-risk populations with currently available vaccines, followed by a booster during a future epidemic, could provide rapid and robust protection even if the circulating virus differs from the vaccine strain.

Low vaccination uptake among high-risk groups

However, vaccination experiences in Finland highlight a critical gap: vaccine uptake among the targeted high-risk groups was far lower than expected, based on data from national vaccination registries. Fewer than 10% of individuals in the estimated target occupational categories received the vaccine, and not all completed the two-dose series. This underscores the need for improved communication and engagement strategies in future preparedness efforts.

Despite the strong immunogenicity, the real-world impact is limited by very low participation among those eligible for vaccination. Crucially, no fur farm workers, who were the group with the highest exposure risk during the 2023 outbreak, participated in the study despite multiple outreach efforts.

Other eligible groups included laboratory personnel, bird ringers, veterinarians, and poultry workers. Laboratory employees constituted the majority of participants in the immunogenicity study.

Several likely reasons for the low vaccine uptake

In many wellbeing services counties, responsible for organizing social and health care services, access to the vaccine was limited. Some individuals may not have been aware that they were eligible for vaccination. There may have been uncertainty about personal risk. As there was no prelicensure data on humans prior to the introduction, the limited data about the vaccine’s benefits and safety may have left people uncertain about whether to be vaccinated. 

“Even if a vaccine is highly immunogenic and well matched to circulating viruses, it can only protect those who receive it,” the authors emphasize.

Improved, tailored communication strategies will be essential for future vaccination campaigns.

Implications for global avian influenza preparedness

As countries prepare for a potential escalation of H5N1 transmission globally, the Finnish experience offers important guidance. The study shows that two doses generate strong antibody and T-cell responses in previously unvaccinated individuals, while a single dose triggers rapid, high-level immunity in those primed years or even decades earlier with any H5 vaccine.

This underscores the value of priming at-risk occupational groups now during the interpandemic period, so they can be boosted quickly and effectively if the epidemiological situation worsens. Successful preparedness will also require proactive engagement of target groups to ensure access, awareness, and trust.

A strategy that includes priming at-risk individuals with currently available H5 vaccines is both sustainable and forward-looking. Should the situation deteriorate rapidly, even a non-perfectly matched booster could still provide timely and meaningful protection.

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Journal

Nature Microbiology

DOI

10.1038/s41564-025-02183-5 

Article Title

Influenza A(H5N8) vaccine induces humoral and cell-mediated immunity against highly pathogenic avian influenza clade 2.3.4.4b A(H5N1) viruses in at-risk individuals

Article Publication Date

5-Dec-2025

How Public Finance for Agriculture Can Improve Food Security, Health, and Climate

By supporting agroecology, multilateral development banks can stop fueling harm and start financing a just and sustainable food systems transition.

Agroecology technician Yin Rangel, 49, checks seed and potato crops in one of PROINPA (Productores Integrales del Paramo) greenhouses in Mucuchies in Merida State, Venezuela, on August 4, 2023.
(Photo by Miguel Zambrano / AFP via Getty Images)

Lizah Makombore

Ladd Connell
Dec 03, 2025

Common Dreams

Agriculture is essential to human life. How we feed ourselves matters for nutrition, health, climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Nearly 928 million people are employed in farming globally, and food systems are responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and most new deforestation.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs), like the World Bank Group (WBG), play a critical role. The WBG has committed to double its agricultural financing to $9 billion a year by 2030. In October it launched AgriConnect, an initiative seeking to transform small-scale farming into an engine of sustainable growth, jobs, and food security.

However, while some MDB investments support equitable and sustainable transformation, too many still fuel environmental destruction and inequity. The World Bank’s private sector arm, IFC, recently invested $47 million in a multi-story pig factory farm in China, for example.

A new report from the University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology analyses MDB agricultural investments and sets out a road map for how banks can support, rather than hinder, sustainable farming. The research finds that the World Bank and other public-sector lenders can drive systemic change by supporting governments with policy reforms, rural extension services, and enabling environments. For example, a $70 million Inter-American Development Bank project in Paraíba, Brazil is promoting inclusive, low-carbon agriculture, and strengthening family farmers and traditional communities through technical assistance and climate-resilient infrastructure.

MDBs’ private sector operations must reform their lending criteria and stop financing destructive projects.

MDBs are better placed than other financial institutions to take long-term, lower-return investments aligned with climate and food security goals. Agroecological farming, a holistic, community-based approach to food systems that applies ecological and social food sovereignty concepts, along with long-term productivity, provides a channel for public sector arms of MDBs to support needed agricultural transformation. MDBs and other public banks therefore, should seek to become the enablers of agroecology. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) are already leading efforts in this direction.
MDB Private Sector Operations: Profit-Driven Harms

In contrast to the IFAD and AFD models, the University of Vermont’s Institute for Agroecology’s report found that the majority of private-focused MDBs prioritize “bankable” projects—typically large-scale, industrial, profit-driven agribusiness. This model steers money toward factory farms that use human-edible food as feed, pollute nearby communities, raise the risks of zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance, and engage in animal cruelty. In 2023, a report by Stop Financing Factory Farming found that public finance institutions invested US$2.27 billion in factory farming, 68% of the total investment in animal agriculture projects that year.

As evidenced by multiple complaints from impacted communities, these investments undermine poverty reduction, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Paris Agreement climate goals. MDBs’ private sector operations must reform their lending criteria and stop financing destructive projects.

The opportunity: Public Sector Banks Can Pave the Way for Private-Sector Transformation

Rich country governments currently subsidize agriculture, mostly industrial, at a level of $842 billion per year. According to the IMF, only a quarter is dedicated to support for public goods in the sector. Shifting this support to incentivize investments in agroecology is crucial to sustain the agricultural transformation that public banks themselves have called for.

Public banks have the opportunity to join a growing number of organisations already advancing an ecological approach to meet the SDGs and wider social, cultural, and economic, and environmental objectives. To do so, they must shift from treating agroecology as merely a niche solution and instead invest in it as a priority means for achieving food systems transformation.

Agroecology puts an end to costly and harmful practices, replacing animal cruelty with humane, safe, and fair standards.

By taking this approach, public banks can better support just transitions in food systems, something that is already beginning to take shape. Earlier this year, for example, the World Bank backed an $800 million loan to the Colombian government to advance a greener and more resilient economic transformation.

The private-sector arms of MDBs, such as IFC and IDB Invest, also have a role to play in aligning with the transition. Most importantly, they can support governments with policy advice and financing criteria that break from entrenched models and exclude industrial animal agriculture from eligibility for finance.

While MDBs have taken steps to make agricultural production and rural incomes less vulnerable to climate change, they have yet to commit to agroecological farming as the most effective pathway. In contrast, IFAD is already demonstrating what this can look like, driving agroecological transitions through private-sector incentives in Ethiopia, Peru, and Vietnam. Similarly, AFD is applying agroecology to support family farming in Ethiopia, Haiti, Madagascar, Malawi, and Sierra Leone.
Agroecology as the Future of Sustainable Farming—and Public Agricultural Finance?

If MDBs are looking to advance the SDGs and solve the polycrisis (climate, biodiversity, pandemic risk, and food security), one of the most effective ways in which this can be done is for the public sector to mobilize policy support and significant capital investment into agroecology. Meanwhile, MDB private sector arms can enable this transition by providing policy advice and finance for interventions that break from entrenched models.

Agroecology puts an end to costly and harmful practices, replacing animal cruelty with humane, safe, and fair standards. But it’s not just about farming practices. It also helps transform food systems, building resilient, reparative, low-emission economies and improves livelihoods in line with the 2030 SDGs.

By supporting agroecology, MDBs can stop fueling harm and start financing a just and sustainable food systems transition. If they are serious about the SDGs, food security, and climate goals, the road map is clear—MDBs’ public sector operations must enable, their private sector operations must reform, and both must support a transition away from industrial agriculture toward a more just and sustainable food system.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Lizah Makombore
Lizah Makombore is a PhD candidate at the University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology.
Full Bio >

Ladd Connell
Ladd Connell is a multilateral finance consultant at Friends of the Earth.
Full Bio >

Study: Family grocery purchases improved when online grocery carts were preloaded with healthy ingredients

UB-Instacart pilot study increased nutritional quality of groceries of families with young children without increasing grocery costs

University at Buffalo

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image: 

Stephanie Anzman-Frasca and her UB colleagues have done pioneering work in behavioral medicine and nutrition, including prior research on optimal defaults; in this study, they wanted to see how the preloaded default grocery carts would work in families with young children at risk for obesity.

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Credit: Sandra Kicman/University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. — University at Buffalo researchers have shown that preloading Instacart online grocery carts with healthy ingredients could be a useful tool for improving the diets of families with young kids at risk for obesity.

Published on December 3 in Appetite, the randomized, controlled pilot study found that providing families with healthy recipes and then preloading online grocery carts via Instacart with the ingredients needed to make those recipes resulted in families making purchases that were significantly more nutritious compared to a group that received only the recipes. Families paid for their grocery purchases as usual and were free to switch out pre-loaded cart ingredients if they wanted to.

“The findings support the idea that healthier choices can be supported by making them easier and more automatic,” says Stephanie Anzman-Frasca, PhD, corresponding author on the paper and an associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Child Health and  Behavior Lab in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

PHOTO: https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2025/12/UB-Instacart-study-family-nutrition-default.html

Research shows that children who are overweight by age 5 are more likely to have obesity later in life, putting them at risk for cardiovascular and other diet-related diseases.

“Since experience with foods and flavors early in life can influence children’s later food preferences, eating behavior and health, it’s important to make healthy choices easier for families with young children,” Anzman-Frasca says.

A ‘real-world’ family shopping intervention

The study was the first time that a default grocery shopping intervention for families with young children was conducted in a real-world scenario, where families were purchasing the actual groceries they would be eating during the four-week study. The goal was to test in a real-world shopping situation the impact of “optimal defaults,” the idea that preselected options can be helpful in guiding people toward healthy behaviors.

Anzman-Frasca and her colleagues in the Division of Behavioral Medicine have done pioneering work in behavioral medicine and nutrition, including prior research on optimal defaults; in this study, they wanted to see how the preloaded default grocery carts would work in families with young children at risk for obesity.

Eligible families had to do at least 75% of their grocery shopping online, and one parent had to have a body mass index of at least 25, classifying them as overweight. A diverse group of 69 families, nearly half of whom were living with lower incomes, participated.

All families received healthy recipes for two weeks, and a sample recipe bundle is included in the published paper. Each weekly bundle included recipes for three dinners, plus a “bonus” recipe, such as a snack, that used leftover ingredients from the dinner meals. While all participating families received the recipes, half of the families had their Instacart online grocery carts preloaded with the ingredients to make those dishes, while the other half did not.

“When faced with making a choice, most people will take the default option unless they’re highly motivated to choose an alternative,” says Mackenzie Ferrante, PhD, a co-author and assistant professor at Rutgers University, who did postdoctoral work at UB. “These days, the easy, or default, choice with food is rarely the healthy option. We wanted to see what would happen if the default option for families was the healthy choice.”

“This real-world study shows how Instacart’s technology can make it easier for families to fill their tables with healthier foods,” says Beatrice Abiero, PhD, senior manager of policy research at Instacart. “By examining how our platform can inspire more nutritious choices, we’re seeing how online grocery can support healthier habits — without adding cost — at scale. We’ll continue to use Instacart Health tools to support research and nutrition programs that help make the healthy choice the easy choice.”

The researchers note that children between the ages of 2 and 5 are frequently afraid of, and resistant to, trying new foods, which can pose a challenge. In this study, recipes were selected for families based on information that they provided about their family’s food preferences at the beginning of the study. Results showed that there was a significantly greater improvement in nutritional quality of families’ grocery purchases in the group that received the preloaded carts compared to the group receiving only the recipes.

‘Eye-opening’ to see what they were spending

Across both groups, families’ spending on groceries decreased over the course of the study. While this wasn’t a main goal of the study, and more research needs to be done, the researchers say it’s possible that the requirement to fill out forms about what they purchased might have made families more aware of superfluous items they were buying. Some participants noted it was eye-opening to see how much they were spending.

In the future, the researchers want to extend the work to examine how the preloaded online grocery carts affect family grocery purchases over a longer time period and corresponding impacts on dietary intake and health. In the meantime, Anzman-Frasca says, families can use the “Buy It Again” feature on Instacart to repurchase healthy ingredients they have enjoyed in the past, which can be used to easily reload those ingredients into future shopping carts.

When this study began in 2023, the White House cited it as an example of how to combat nutrition insecurity and diet-related disease. The project was supported by Instacart and leveraged Instacart Health tools. The support from Instacart complemented an initial investment from the UB Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. UB’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute provided seed funding for prior pilot research that set the stage for the current project.

Additional co-authors include Juliana Goldsmith, Adrianna Calabro, Karlie Gambino and Leonard H. Epstein, PhD, of the Jacobs School; Lucia A. Leone, PhD, and Gregory E. Wilding, PhD, of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions; and Brianna Wallenhorst of the Independent Health Foundation.

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Journal

Appetite

DOI

10.1016/j.appet.2025.108397 

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Effects of an optimal defaults grocery shopping intervention on household grocery purchases of families with young children

Article Publication Date

3-Dec-2025

Stopping dog meat sales in Indonesia is more about shuffling paperwork than morality

/ Sasha Sashina - Unsplash

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By bno - Surabaya Office December 3, 2025

Dog meat consumption in Indonesia sits at the intersection of cultural food traditions, public health challenges, animal welfare concerns, and political risk. Unlike many mainstream livestock animals, dogs are increasingly recognised as companions in urban households, service roles, and community protection efforts across Indonesia. This evolving social perception has built momentum for legal intervention, particularly as rabies remains a deadly risk in several regions.

Although national legislation has yet to impose a blanket prohibition on dog meat consumption, especially in rural areas, provinces and cities are now accelerating local frameworks to restrict its trade and processing. The capital, Jakarta, has become a focal point of this regulatory shift, influencing discourse in neighbouring provinces and reigniting long-dormant legislative discussions.

Jakarta legalises ban, establishing a major precedent

Jakarta introduced a binding provincial rule in late 2025 that outlaws the trade and slaughter of animals categorised as carriers of rabies for food-related purposes. The Jakarta Governor, Pramono Anung, became a central figure in the rollout by confirming the regulation’s operational date as November 24, which was publicly shared via his Instagram channel, MerahPutih.com reports. This regulatory milestone positions dog and cat meat sales as formally unlawful in Jakarta. The policy’s intention was framed as a safeguard for public health, sanitation, and zoonotic disease prevention, rather than an assessment of cultural dietary customs.

The newly enacted rule, numbered 36/2025, extends beyond household pets to include a larger group of rabies-transmitting species such as monkeys, bats, civets, and similar animals, explicitly banning them from market circulation for dietary uses. The regulation establishes clear supply-side restrictions, making the sale of live dogs, raw meat, or processed food products from rabies-transmitting animals illegal if directed for consumption. Markets under Jakarta governance are now expected to adhere to these health classifications when selling or slaughtering animals.

The Jakarta food marketplace operator, Pasar Jaya, had previously confirmed that dog meat sellers operated within parts of Jakarta, including at Pasar Senen, which motivated regulatory tightening and enforcement commitments from the provincial leadership.

To ensure compliance, the ban includes escalating administrative penalties. For initial breaches, authorities are expected to issue written cautions and temporarily confiscate rabies-transmitting animals for disease monitoring, especially where symptoms such as rabies are detected. Repeat offences allow the government to seize animals again, close businesses, or remove trading permits entirely. The ban, according to the governor, completed a campaign promise to activists advocating for domestic animal protection and stricter consumer health measures, Antaranews reports.

Jakarta legislator Hardiyanto Kenneth emphasises sustained advocacy by animal welfare communities, veterinarians, and activists, Tempo.co reports. He highlighted the governor’s political resolve in establishing firm legal controls despite the complexity of navigating culturally sensitive consumption habits. Kenneth underscored that activists had pushed for years to solidify Jakarta’s regulation against dog and cat meat trading. He further cited resident concern over rabies spread, calling the issue a public health imperative rather than a symbolic cultural revision.

Kenneth also reinforced legislative backing for enforcement oversight, urging Jakarta’s Dinas Ketahanan Pangan, Kelautan dan Pertanian Provinsi DKI Jakarta to coordinate monitoring, conduct routine checks, and deliver firm administrative enforcement when necessary. He stressed that the rule protects citizens from rabies, a serious zoonotic disease risk that public institutions must prioritise. This marked Jakarta’s political transition toward building a humane and modernised livestock health governance model, grounded in consumer protection and portable to possible future national frameworks.

Additionally, Kenneth applauded Pramono’s campaign fulfilment, recognising it as a milestone in Jakarta’s urban development narrative, with potential influence across provinces wrestling with enforcement gaps. He urged exporters and local traders to ignore the rule to be held accountable through multi-agency operations and licencing oversight.

Antaranews also documented Pramono’s regulatory endorsement, reiterating that rule 36/2025 shuts supply routes permitting dog meat distribution for consumption in Jakarta.

Bantul at the heart of controversy and enforcement barriers

Just outside Jakarta’s regulatory lens, however, a viral video circulated in late 2025 showing dogs packed into sacks in an alleged dog meat supply chain in Bantul, Yogyakarta, sparking public outrage and new regional commitments, detiknews reports. Gubernur Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono X responded by confirming that new regulatory reinforcement was being prepared to restrict the dog meat trade. He noted that local authorities had been unable to act due to the absence of enforceable trading laws prohibiting dog meat consumption.

Although the DIY administration had previously distributed a regional circular in 2023 to control the distribution of rabies-transmitting animals for food purposes, he publicly acknowledged that the circular lacked sufficient enforcement weight.

Sultan proposed strengthening the circular into a governor decree, elevating the administrative enforceability of dog meat restrictions across districts and cities, which may require consultation with regencies and municipalities. This gap between administrative intent and enforcement authority has been a repeated theme in the national dog meat discourse, illustrating how regulatory escalation often encounters friction in the informal trading economy.

Sultan’s announcement followed police inspections led by AKP I Nengah Jeffry who verified the location of dog meat processing stalls in Bantul at Kapanewon Bambanglipuro where authorities recorded five active food stalls selling dog meat products. Jeffry confirmed that police had inspected the viral video site but found no animals being traded at the time, although processed dog meat sales were occurring. However, due to the absence of enforceable trading prohibition laws, police actions remained advisory in nature, focusing on outreach rather than obstruction. Local enforcement lacked regulatory authority to issue legal penalties, as Indonesia’s penal code currently sanctions animal abuse but does not prohibit consuming dog meat itself.

Legislature begins drafting fundamental food safety law

The legislative body in DIY has restarted regulatory drafting to supply the province’s first framework governing all animal-sourced food safety controls, including animal health conditions, slaughtering standards, and processed meat quality oversight. The proposal, named Pemberian Jaminan Keamanan Pangan dan Mutu Pangan Asal Hewan, is only in initial stages. The head of DIY legal drafting committee Yuni Satia Rahayu confirmed that the policy remains in early academic drafting, requiring comprehensive supporting research before the legislative process advances, HarianJogja reports.

Rahayu explained that the proposal aims to govern the health and safety controls for all animal-derived food products in the province, including mainstream livestock, non-mainstream meat, and rabies-transmitting species such as dogs. The proposal will form the province’s first consolidated foundation for animal-sourced food safety governance, establishing public inspection authority, legal penalties, oversight mechanisms, and trader compliance education. She also confirmed that when passed, the regulation may introduce surveillance pathways, compliance support, and penalties for breaches involving illegal or unsafe meat trade.

Human rights, religious freedom

In one of the most sensitive and related controversies in late 2025, national ministry Kementerian Imigrasi dan Pemasyarakatan confirmed that authorities had opened investigative proceedings to examine an allegation that a correctional facility administrator coerced Muslim detainees to eat dog meat, a dietary violation under Islamic law. The facility administrator under scrutiny, Chandra Sudarto, remains under internal review, with sanctions promised if coercion is proven. This allegation was released publicly by Indonesia’s national parliament member Mafirion, who argued that regardless of detainee status, religious freedom and dietary boundaries remain protected rights under human rights frameworks.

Mafirion demanded administrative suspension and law enforcement progression to restrict social polarisation around the matter. The ministry spokesperson Rika Aprianti confirmed formal provincial verification had been initiated, promising administrative action if abuse or coercion is evident, CNBC Indonesia reports.

From local experiment to national implications

As is, Jakarta’s binding rule creates Indonesia’s most substantial experiment in stopping the dog meat trade by using a public health classification strategy, targeting supply channels rather than cultural beliefs. Bantul, lacking enforceable laws, reveals the compliance risk that may redirect trade rather than reduce it. DIY legislature, now drafting the region’s first animal-sourced food safety regulation, reflects how local controversy has revived legal prioritisation.

What happens next will not be decided only in government offices. Tracking supply routes, educating consumers, supporting traders in transition, expanding rabies prevention, and unifying veterinary inspection standards will determine whether regulations sustainably reshape behaviour or reorganise the contours of informal trade in man's best friend.