Yes, you should be worried about bird flu

You know how COVID-19 started spreading quietly in 2019, but no one knew it yet? Well, bird flu is doing the exact opposite. It’s giving us countless warning signs that we could be in the early days of a growing crisis, and yet we are still acting blissfully unaware. Since 2022, a bird flu pandemic has caused the deaths of over 100 million birds in the U.S. poultry industry and almost half a billion farmed birds around the world.

For years, agribusiness and government officials have dismissed the risk posed by factory farms, but the disease’s novel jump to cattle and its spread from mammal to mammal makes the danger of this mutating pathogen harder to downplay. Scientists worry that we are falling behind an emerging pandemic by failing to track the virus and understand the full scope of infection among farm workers. We are now locked in a biological arms race with a zoonotic pathogen that has had a 50 percent mortality rate in humans, and we’re losing ground.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the U.S. population has “extremely low to no” immunity to H5N1 bird flu. It plans to spend $5 million on seasonal flu vaccinations for farm workers vulnerable to infection. Meanwhile, “extreme heat” and fans used on factory farms are believed to be exacerbating bird flu’s spread.

The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus has now been confirmed on 172 dairy farms in 13 U.S. states, and H5N1 has infected at least 13 people in the U.S. since April — four of those cases tied to exposure to infected dairy cows. This rapid spread through the dairy industry indicates that the virus is changing.

Viruses, bacteria and other microbes constantly evolve and mutate, cycling between humans and other animals. Sometimes, they are benign, and sometimes they can kill us. In June, it was confirmed that a bird flu variant never before found in humans, H5N2, was linked to the April death of a 59-year-old man in Mexico. 

Thus far, reassurances from health officials have rested on the fact that the H5N1 variant of bird flu does not spread easily from human to human, but scientists are worried that as it mutates, it could become more transmissible. 

Dr. Mario Ramirez, an emergency medicine physician, current managing director at Opportunity Labs, and former acting director for Pandemic and Emerging Threats in the Office of Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently warned in an op-ed of “a critical need for a more robust and adaptable plan, especially for protecting children and schools, severely affected by the faults in the COVID-19 pandemic response.”

Agribusiness’ inadequate and uncaring response — even as it fails to protect workers and track the spread of bird flu — is deeply concerning. Three out of four emerging pathogens found in humans begin in animals, and 60 percent of known pathogens are zoonotic. Yet factory farms exacerbate threats of disease by overcrowding animals in filthy and stressful conditions and feeding them enormous quantities of medically important antibiotics.

Not only is this industry’s harm not being addressed, but factory farming is expanding and intensifying across the country and around the globe.

It’s also worth noting that eggs are used to make vaccines that protect from severe illness—but in addition to the CDC’s warning that our immune systems are not prepared for H5N1, there is concern that the reliance on eggs for flu vaccines may become a problem as more birds become ill. Furthermore, the presence of the disease could be worse than we estimate, since U.S. labs are reportedly not effectively using the more than one million bird flu tests available to them. 

As we learned with COVID, it is challenging to understand where and how diseases originate, evolve and spread. This situation is further complicated when irresponsible actors hide or fail to share critical evidence. Like the tobacco industry, factory farms dislike transparency, and they don’t want to be held accountable for their imprudent conduct.

So-called ag-gag laws prevent consumers from learning about wanton animal cruelty, and they’ve encouraged a “don’t look, don’t find” approach to investigating diseases. Of course, not finding evidence of bird flu does not prove that the disease is absent; it could result from inadequate testing. In Michigan, more cases of bird flu have reportedly been found not because the spread is worse there, but because officials are actively testing more animals and people and incentivizing testing on farms.

Sick animals on farms are commonly denied necessary veterinary care, and they are hardly ever tested for contagious microbes. Instead, animals with illnesses are culled and sent to slaughter to be used for human food.

The concerns around bird flu are increasing, but dairy farmers are refusing to share information with health officials. They often refuse even to test for bird flu in the first place, making it more difficult to track and prevent the disease from spreading and becoming more dangerous. Recent research shows that bird flu remains transmittable on milking equipment for at least one hour—another sign that farm workers must be given the protection they are often denied.

I feel awful for dairies and other farmers worried about losing their income and livelihoods, but withholding this information could put billions of lives at risk. Ultimately, we need to reform agriculture to mitigate disease risks and to recognize that our health is intertwined with the health and well-being of other animals and the environment.

Factory farming is a breeding ground for disease. It seeks short-term profits and creates long-term threats while abusing animals and squandering precious resources. It destroys ecosystems and biodiversity, contributing to the climate crisis and making our earth less resilient. It depends on antibiotics, vaccines and other pharmaceutical interventions to keep animals alive and growing in unhealthy conditions, spurring the evolution and emergence of new pathogens and antibiotic-resistant microbes. 

Bird flu is circulating in wild and domesticated animals, and more human cases are emerging. This outbreak can serve as a canary in the coal mine, allowing us to pay attention, understand the consequences of our actions, and then make necessary adjustments. We must end factory farming and support a healthier, more resilient, sustainable plant-based food system. There’s no time to waste.

Gene Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the world’s premier farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization, and author of the books “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food” and “Living the Farm Sanctuary Life.”