Fitness
Would vaccines stop bird flu, now jumping from poultry to dairy cows? It’s complicated.
Migrating snow geese on Storm Lake. Wild birds can spread avian influenza to domestic flocks.
Thousands and thousands of snow geese off Storm Lake’s Scout Park. Wild geese are believed to be the main carriers of avian influenza.
It sounds simple: Vaccinate the nation’s chickens, turkeys and ducks against highly pathogenic avian influenza and bring under control the wildly contagious virus that’s resulted in the deaths of millions of domestic birds and jumped to dairy herds in 11 states, most recently Iowa.
The virus’s spread has sparked concern about the safety of the nation’s food supply and worries that a more serious strain could emerge, endangering humans.
Though Mexico on June 5 reported what the World Health Organization said was the first human bird flu death of the current outbreak, federal officials say the virus’s risk to people is low, and milk, eggs and beef remain safe to consume.
But Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have urged U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ramp up the federal agency’s response. In a May 30 letter, Reynolds said the U.S. Department of Agriculture should “prioritize and expedite the approval process for animal vaccines,” saying the disease threatens the state’s economic stability and the nation’s food security.
Iowa’s Grassley and Ernst, along with 15 other lawmakers, sent a bipartisan letter May 1 to Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, asking for a “collaborative federal response, heightened surveillance, and additional resources to support vaccine research.”
But even with massive flock losses, vaccines are “not an easy solution,” said Greg Tyler, CEO of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, a Georgia-based industry group.
“It’s just not so simple as to say, ‘Let’s vaccinate and we’re going to solve the world’s problems,’” Tyler said. “That’s not going to happen. You’re going to have some fallout.”
Here’s why: Because the vaccine can mask symptoms in infected birds, other countries would likely ban U.S. poultry imports, costing producers an estimated $24 billion and axing 215,000 poultry jobs, an export council analysis shows. In addition, vaccinating hundreds of millions of chickens, turkeys and other poultry — potentially more than once — is a costly and practical challenge. Plus, researchers still are trying to determine how effective vaccines would be.
Even with vaccinations, domestic birds can still get avian influenza, Tyler said, just like vaccinated people can still get COVID-19, even though their symptoms may be milder. And with birds, “Once they get HPAI, that flock is going to have to be depopulated, just like it is now,” he said.
Vaccinating poultry could reduce bird flu ― but also, trade
Iowa poultry producers have been hard hit by bird flu virus, killing nearly 23.3 million chickens, turkeys and other birds in infected flocks to prevent the spread of the disease since the outbreak began two years ago. Nationally, the virus has resulted in the deaths of about 96.8 million birds, USDA data shows.
Spread across the country by waterfowl and other birds as they migrate, bird flu also can jump from farm to farm, picked up on workers’ shoes, feed truck tires or equipment.
In March, federal officials reported the virus, called H5N1, had infected dairy herds in Texas and Kansas, and it has since spread to nine other states, including Iowa. It was reported Friday in a 250-cow Sioux County herd and on June 5 in an O’Brien County dairy herd with 4,500 cows.
The virus also has killed mammals across roughly 30 states, from bobcats to bears. In Iowa, the virus has proven lethal to red foxes and Virginia opossums.
Last year, the USDA approved emergency use of a vaccine to inoculate critically endangered California condors, about two dozen of which have succumbed to bird flu. But the USDA doesn’t allow the use of an HPAI vaccine in commercial poultry flocks, said Yuko Sato, an Iowa State University veterinary medicine professor.
More: The bird flu has jumped to foxes, bears and other mammals. Are humans next?
A vaccine would give producers another tool to battle an outbreak, Sato said. Now, the only way farmers can protect their flocks is through biosecurity measures, already tightened after a large outbreak in 2015 left 32.7 million chickens, turkeys and other birds dead across Iowa.
The vaccine also would reduce the amount of virus that can spread and infect other birds, Sato said. That potentially would mean fewer bird deaths and reduced losses for farmers.
But vaccines can mask avian influenza symptoms, a reason that countries, including the U.S., ban vaccinated imports, which can include live birds. Tyler, the export council CEO, said a ban on U.S. poultry would hit the broiler industry the hardest, with 18% of the nation’s broilers exported, 10% of turkeys and 4% of eggs.
The trade council’s analysis says about $6 billion of the industry’s losses would come from missed exports to about 80 countries, and $18 billion would come from an oversupply of chickens, turkey and eggs in the U.S. market.
“It’s going to drop prices, not only on poultry meat, but all proteins,” Tyler said.
Last year, the U.S. exported $6.6 billion in poultry products, down 5.8% from 2022, with Mexico, Canada, China, Taiwan and Cuba its top five markets, USDA data shows.
Tyler said some countries already are blocking U.S. exports. For example, China’s largest poultry purchases were “chicken paws” or feet, an essential ingredient for which it pays $3 a pound. With fewer buyers, U.S, producers send the parts that can’t be sold to other countries to renderers for 8 cents or 9 cents a pound, he said.
From 2015: 40-year-old ‘zombie’ meat smuggled into China
And U.S. trade partners would no longer get the import’s nutritional and economic benefits, Tyler said.
“They get hit, too,” he said.
How fast is bird flu spreading to cows ― and perhaps back to birds?
Much of Iowa’s poultry flock serves the state’s nation-leading egg production. It faces bird flu exposure not only from migrating birds but now also from dairy herds, said Kevin Stiles, CEO of the North Central Poultry Association & Egg Council.
In addition to the outbreaks among cows in northwest Iowa, Minnesota last week also announced its first H5N1 dairy herd outbreak. Infected cows display decreased appetite and milk production, but typically recover from the virus.
“We’re concerned about the potential transmission back and forth,” said Stiles, adding that nationally, dairy herds have infected bird flocks.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture said scientists are working to determine how the virus was introduced into both flocks and herds. It said last week it will begin testing dairy farms near sites of poultry outbreaks, in addition to testing nearby flocks.
The state said it hasn’t decided whether it will test poultry operations around infected dairy herds.
“While it’s not an end-of-life situation for dairy herds, it certainly is for poultry,” Stiles said, adding that the group supports the USDA’s recent announcement it’s investing $824 million in increased testing, surveillance and research on H5N1 in dairy herds.
More: How Michigan became ground zero for H5 avian influenza in the US
The state agriculture agency said Friday it will seek additional federal money to help dairy producers cover production and livestock losses and the cost of surveillance and virus analysis and to improve payments for poultry losses.
So far, Sato said, it’s unclear how many Iowa dairy herds may have been infected, since many cows aren’t tested unless they are moved.
“We’re still not sure how widespread the virus is across dairy cattle,” she said.
Vaccinating cattle could be starting point toward control of bird flu
In addition to highly pathogenic avian influenza, the turkey industry also is battling the resurgence of an old virus.
Gretta Irwin, the Iowa Turkey Federation executive director, said about two dozen farms have been hit with avian metapneumovirus, wiping out about 10% of their flocks.
She said a vaccine is available globally to prevent the disease — referred to as aMPV — but it hasn’t been approved for U.S. poultry use.
“A vaccine would be helpful in treating this virus,” Irwin said.
As for H5N1: “Ultimately, we want to eliminate the virus, and developing a vaccine to prevent further spread of H5N1 in cattle will be an important step towards that end,” the USDA said in an email last week. It added that the National Animal Disease Center in Ames “has begun to assess the potential to develop an effective vaccine for H5N1 in cattle.”
It’s “very early in the vaccine development process, and it is difficult to predict how long development might take,” the USDA said, adding that “many outstanding questions remain about the transmission to cattle, characterizations of the infection” as well as trade implications.
The “USDA is exploring these questions while developing the science, and will continue to work swiftly on this process,” it said.
Hundreds of millions of vaccinations won’t be cheap
If the U.S. decides to use vaccines, the costs would be substantial, Tyler said. For example, the egg industry alone has 300 million laying hens. A bird flu vaccine would need to be injected periodically, like humans getting a flu vaccination each winter.
But as bird flu continues to force massive euthanizations, the benefits of using a vaccine may get closer to outweighing the costs, said Chad Hart, an ISU agricultural economist.
“HPAI has now reached the stage where people are talking about vaccination because … the persistence of the disease is showing us that those lower-cost strategies aren’t handling the disease outbreak we have,” he said.
“As the disease pressure ramps up, then you scale up what you do” in response, he said.
More: Two vets hundreds of miles apart, both ISU grads, solve dairy cow sickness whodunit
The U.S. may not be ready to use vaccines, but “producers would like it to be an option,” Hart said. And the societal benefits may be increasing as well.
“We’re finding linkages we never thought we’d have,” Hart said. “Who thought we needed to look for bird flu in a dairy cow or a red fox?”
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457.
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