Avian Flu Shows the Need for Transformative Meat Governance

Introduction

The Defund Meat convention on the Max Planck Institute that prompted this collection of essays “moved the meat query from the margins into the highlight of the continuing debates on One Well being, sustainability, local weather change, meals safety, and public well being”. Intensive animal manufacturing poses large-scale threats to public well being. Elevating, killing, and consuming animals and animal merchandise carries important dangers of zoonotic illness.  Lots of the adverse results of animal agriculture have gotten well-known, however the zoonotic illness dangers will not be but totally explored.

This contribution argues that we should add zoonotic illness danger to the checklist of causes for transformative meat governance. Severe zoonotic dangers are inherent in intensive animal manufacturing and in addition in non-intensive animal manufacturing. Manufacturing scale doesn’t make one sort roughly harmful or immune. Zoonotic illness danger is one compelling justification, amongst many different causes mentioned within the different contributions to this debate, for transformative meat governance. The problems are pressing, and the time is now. We can’t look forward to the subsequent main disaster, the subsequent pandemic, or the subsequent headline information of one other animal cruelty exposé within the animal agriculture trade.

The main focus of this contribution is on one sort of zoonotic illness: avian influenza, and particularly virus sort A subtype H5N11), or A(H5N1). In domesticated chickens, one of these avian influenza is “extremely pathogenic”, which means that the signs are extreme and actually deadly for a big proportion of those animals.  Thus, avian influenza sort A subtype H5N1 is taken into account extremely pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).2) Scientists first recognized that HPAI might trigger human sickness in 1997. Previous to that point, birds had been regarded as the one animals who may very well be contaminated. Human an infection and sickness modified HPAI from a literal “fowl flu” to an influenza that might trigger a human pandemic.

HPAI and its Transmission

The host species of HPAI is wild birds – notably wild aquatic birds, however the affect and significance of HPAI – together with the potential for changing into a human pandemic – is immediately linked to people elevating, utilizing, and killing chickens and different avian species for eggs and for meat. As an infographic from the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management (CDC) reveals, the mechanisms for transmission of HPAI are advanced and multi-directional.  HPAI is often discovered of their gastro-intestinal and respiratory tracts, whereas not harming these host birds. Nevertheless, when HPAI is secreted by their mouths and noses and thru their feces, it could stay alive after which infect different species, for whom it may be very dangerous. For instance, at 20 levels Celsius, HPAI can survive so long as 21 days in water. Furthermore, many species of those wild birds are migratory, they usually can shed the virus over the lengthy migratory paths. HPAI has been documented as spreading from wild birds on to people, from wild birds to domesticated chickens and different domesticated birds used for meals, and from wild birds to cows.

There are additional permutations of unfold, together with from cows to people, cows to cats, and cows to domesticated chickens and different domesticated birds used for meals to people. After the CDC created this infographic, further species of mammals have been contaminated, together with polar bears and the California condor, which is endangered, and quite a few different species: “ferrets, mink, otters, badgers, skunks, opossums, critically endangered Amur leopards and tigers, mountain lions, marten and fisher, European polecats, lynx, bobcats, home cats, canine, pink foxes, coyotes, raccoons, raccoon canine, bears of all types, seals of all types, home pigs, sea lions, numerous porpoises, bottlenose dolphins, short-beaked widespread dolphins, white-sided dolphins, Chilean dolphins, and others.” The depend of fowl species contaminated is greater than 500.

On July 28, 2025, the FAO, WHO, and WOAH collectively assessed the general public well being danger of HPAI: “Transmission between animals continues to happen and, to this point, a rising but nonetheless restricted variety of human infections are being reported. Though further human infections related to publicity to contaminated animals or contaminated environments are anticipated to happen, the general public well being affect of such infections at a worldwide stage, these days, is taken into account minor. The evaluation might change if and when further epidemiological or virological data turns into accessible”. Given the current historical past of HPAI and its pandemic potential, it’s essential to maintain HPAI on the worldwide radar. The WHO’s evaluation, reported within the New England Journal of Medication, reveals that “As of November 1, 2024, greater than 900 human instances in 24 nations had been reported globally since November 2003, with a cumulative case fatality of roughly 50%”.

Animal Agriculture Intensifies Unfold and Affect of HPAI

Let’s focus now on the function of domesticated chickens and different domesticated birds used for meals. Roughly 75 billion chickens are slaughtered yearly worldwide for consumption of their flesh. On the finish of 2024, experiences indicated that HPAI prompted the loss of life of greater than 300 million birds. Within the U.S., as of June 13, 2025, the final day that the CDC reported cumulative figures, 174,804,048 instances had been “detected in U.S. wild aquatic birds, industrial poultry and yard or hobbyist flocks starting in January 2022.” These instances occurred in all fifty states and Puerto Rico and occurred in 1,709 separate “flocks”, of which 788 had been industrial and 921 had been yard flocks. Because the measurement of a industrial flock is considerably bigger than a yard flock, we will deduce that the majority contaminated animals had been in industrial services the place a whole bunch of 1000’s or thousands and thousands of chickens or different domesticated animals raised for meals or eggs are stored. For instance, an outbreak in Maricopa County, Arizona, on Could 30, 2025, in accordance with the USA Division of Agriculture (USDA), concerned 1,354,200 hens at a “industrial desk egg layer” facility.

The wide-scale presence of HPAI at industrial services throughout the U.S. is a compelling, but ignored, purpose why we want transformative meat governance. Industrial farms, together with chickens raised for meat and hens stored for eggs, declare to have excessive biosecurity (and definitely increased biosecurity than “yard breeders” of chickens). And for the sake of argument, allow us to deem this declare to be true, and even say that they’ve very excessive biosecurity measures. For instance, United Egg Producers experiences that “some egg farms have added designated altering areas, the place personnel ‘bathe in’ and alter into designated coveralls and protecting gear that keep on the farm. When their day’s work is finished, they ‘bathe out, change again into their unique garments, and go away the designated clothes on the farm’”. Frequent handwashing and footbaths for footwear are different biosecurity mechanisms. All these measures, and but, 788 industrial services had HPAI outbreaks between January 2022 and June 2025. The conclusion is that very robust biosecurity measures can’t maintain HPAI from infecting chickens in industrial services.

There are numerous causes for this incapability to cease the unfold of HPAI, together with the truth that the influenza can merely infiltrate even essentially the most safe websites. HPAI can decimate a whole flock shortly, to the purpose that a whole flock is killed as soon as the influenza virus is current. There are a number of explanations for this.

First, low genetic variety permits illness to unfold extra shortly; excessive genetic variety can act as a pure buffer to illness. To take chickens who’re raised for meat for instance, a lot of the chickens are genetically an identical as a result of prevalence of 1 sort. The corporate Aviagen, which operates internationally, sells Ross 308, Ross 308 AP, and Ross 708 chickens. The Ross 308 “is the world’s hottest broiler, offering built-in operations with the proper stability of breeder, broiler and processing efficiency”. Genetic uniformity amongst hens can be the objective of economic egg operations. Take the corporate Hello-Line and its hen “W-36” for instance: “The Hy-Line W-36 is the world’s most effective egg layer with glorious livability. The Hy-Line W-36 lays dozens of top-quality, strong-shelled eggs with minimal feed consumption, making her the trade’s lowest-cost producer of eggs. With no equal in egg stable content material, she’s the one alternative for purchasers who course of eggs. The reliable Hy-Line W-36 generates most income for the egg producer.”

Second, the situations that exist in industrial manufacturing services are exactly people who facilitate illness transmission. Animals crowded collectively in massive numbers with poor air flow, poor hygiene, and poor welfare signifies that illness strikes shortly, particularly amongst genetically related animals. These situations additionally result in excessive ranges of stress, which may undermine the well being of animals’ immune programs and make them extra inclined to illness.

HPAI Provides Financial Price Burdens to Society

Industrial services – and different agricultural producers – obtain subsidies from the U.S. authorities. The U.S. spends an estimated $38 billion to subsidize meat and dairy manufacturing. The U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) “administers packages that create home and worldwide advertising and marketing alternatives for U.S. producers of meals, fiber, and specialty crops” by its Agricultural Advertising Service (USDA-AMS). USDA additionally “pays for birds and eggs that have to be destroyed” as a consequence of HPAI. As of the tip of 2024, the U.S. spent $ 2.1 billion {dollars} in indemnification funds made to poultry and dairy producers to compensate them for losses sustained as a consequence of H5N1 and prevention measures.

The questions requested by governments and media are inclined to deal with how HPAI will be stopped as soon as it’s circulating amongst animals and as soon as animals have contaminated people. Much more intense questions deal with how HPAI will be prevented from circulating extensively amongst people and turning right into a pandemic. These are vital questions, however the deal with them to the exclusion of prevention-related efforts is misguided.

Conclusions

We should acknowledge and confront the truth that the industries that produce meat and different animal merchandise are a significant reason behind zoonotic illness and HPAI particularly. They’re a major downside that have to be addressed – and never a everlasting state of affairs that we should spend time, cash, and human and animal lives making an attempt to prop up and save from their very own inherent flaws. Step one is to view HPAI holistically, as this contribution has carried out, seeing it not as discrete info and harms however as causal chains of occasions. Once we take a tough and sincere look, we see that the industries that use chickens – for meat or eggs – bear important accountability within the causal chain that results in human deaths and a possible international pandemic.

Second, having acknowledged the risks and harms of those industries, we should make this accountability, and the info that stand behind it, utterly clear. Piecing collectively the causal chains even for this contribution took dozens of hours; one may even suppose that the function of animal agriculture has been obscured so that customers have no idea, for instance, that their tax {dollars} are compensating these industries for issues of their very own making.

Third, we want lawmakers with sufficient fortitude to transcend mere patchwork rules of those animal industries to interact in true transformative meat governance. The industries we all know immediately will look very completely different because of this transformation; that can be not solely a constructive improvement however a necessary one.