Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.
Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News. He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.
Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.
“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.
“Culling puts people at the highest risk of exposure, which is why Secretary Kennedy and N.I.H. want to limit culling activities,” Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “Culling is not the solution. Strong biosecurity is.”
In her plan to combat bird flu, Ms. Rollins recommended strengthening biosecurity on farms — preventing the virus from entering their premises, or halting its spread with stringent cleaning and use of protective gear.
But that is a longer-term solution. The U.S.D.A. is beginning those efforts in just ten states.
Letting the virus spread unchecked would also likely lead to trade embargoes against poultry from the United States, he added: “There’s a huge economic loss immediately.”
Posted by John3262005
8 Comments
I keep saying this, but it keeps being relevant. The man is a Nurgle cultist. He wakes up every morning thinking of what he can do to prevent rare diseases. He doesn’t want any diseases to be rare. That violates their horrifying Chaos God given rights.
Already very tired of Interesting Times stress testing the fuck out of everything.
Every time one of this idiots blames culling just remind them who wrote the rules saying to cull them. It was the Trump administration
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Actually, it could save millions of human lives if they do exactly this, obliterate the poultry industry, and then when they try to do it again with the next human pandemic, everybody screams “NOOOO don’t you remember what happened with the chickens?” (And then: “Silence, insolent peasants! Sec. Hegseth, shoot the troublemakers!” So never mind, that won’t work.)
Or the proliferation of bird flu will help it make the jump to humans and we all die. Whatever. I’m beginning to think we have it coming.
> Letting the virus spread unchecked would also likely lead to trade embargoes against poultry from the United States, he added: “There’s a huge economic loss immediately.”
It should be abundantly clear to everyone at this point that this would be a fully intended consequence.
>Culling puts people at the highest risk of exposure,
As opposed to letting it spread through the entire flock over several days and linger for weeks as most birds die anyways and workers are coming into contact with the birds daily.
Yep that didn’t sound like a blatant obvious lie.