We've been dealing with low pathogenic avian influenza for decades in the poultry industry, but this is different," said Jennifer Mullinax, assistant professor in the University of Maryland Department of Environmental Science & Technology and a co-author of a study published Wednesday.
"This high pathogenic virus is wiping out everything in numbers that we've never seen before," Millinax and the co-authors wrote in the journal Conservation Biology.
The University of Maryland-led team includes research scientists and partners of the Disease Decision Analysis Research Group at the U.S. Geological Survey, Eastern Ecological Science Center.
The team found that the deadly bird flu H5N1 is a novel virus for American birds, and they said it is likely to become endemic, potentially posing risks to food security and the economy.
Egg prices, for example, have soared in recent months because of shortages caused by chicken deaths.
The conclusions, the researchers said, were based on an analysis of five different data sources that show the progression of the highly pathogenic H5N1 from Eurasia to the United States.
It was first documented in 2021, and by October 2022, more than 58 million domestic poultry had to be culled to curtail infection in the United States. In Canada, 7 million poultry birds were culled.
According to the study's lead author, Johanna Harvey, H5N1 also is having a heavy impact on wild birds.
"It's difficult to estimate how many birds are truly affected across wild populations, but we're seeing dramatic disease impacts in raptors, sea birds and colonial nesting birds," Harvey said. "And we now have the highest amount of poultry loss to avian influenza, so this is a worst-case scenario."
The research data shows this bird flu virus appears to sustain itself throughout the year. In summer, it was detected in wild birds, while poultry outbreaks occurred in spring and fall, the researchers said.
To manage this new, deadlier bird flu, the research team recommends a method similar to dealing with a human pandemic. It's called structured decision-making -- a specific process that brings experts and stakeholders together to distinguish the known from the unknown. It establishes measurable goals with quantifiable results.
Researchers expect the U.S. pattern to follow that of Europe, where H5N1 already being treated as an endemic disease as opposed to a virus that can be eradicated.
"This paper illustrates how unprecedented it is, and describes what we think is coming," Mullinax said. "It's really a call to arms saying, we can't afford to address this from our individual silos.
"Federal agencies, state agencies, the agriculture sector and wildlife management, we are all going to have to deal with this together, because we can't afford not to."
Related Links
Epidemics on Earth - Bird Flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
