Posted on 06/23/2025 6:31:04 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a potential plan to vaccinate poultry against bird flu for the first time that includes evaluating how it would affect exports, the agency told Reuters this week.
The actions advance the government's assessment of a vaccine after the USDA received proposals on usage from associations representing egg and turkey producers whose farms have been devastated by the virus. Nearly 175 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been culled in attempts to contain outbreaks since 2022 in the nation's worst animal-health emergency.
Losses of egg-laying chickens drove egg prices to records this year, prompting grocers to ration supplies, restaurants to hike prices, and food manufacturers to increase imports from countries including Turkey, Brazil and South Korea.
The USDA pledged to spend up to $100 million on research into vaccines and other therapies to combat bird flu after prices spiked.
Now, USDA and industry officials are pursuing a more solid, written plan to potentially show importers to gauge whether vaccinations would limit trading. Industry members expect the agency to complete the plan in July.
The USDA said this week that it is working with federal, state and industry officials to develop its potential plan and is engaging with trading partners.
"You need a more complete strategy and plan for them to consider," said Dr. John Clifford, a former USDA chief veterinary officer who advises the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council.
Debates over potential vaccinations have pitted poultry producers against each other since widespread outbreaks in 2015.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
All birds die from highly pathogenic avian influenza. How is “natural immunity” to be achieved if all of the sick animals die?
FYI, all immunity is natural, whether it is induced by an active pathogen or by an inert part of a pathogen. The process of analyzing the pathogen and developing pathogen-specific T- and B-cells and antibodies is a completely natural immune system function that works pretty much the same way no matter how it is induced to act.
Finally
Maybe we should do what they do, or Turkey, or.... That have some invisible protection
Exactly. Cheaper, too.
Actually, millions of birds in Mexico have been culled because of bird flu since the 1990s. The same can be said of birds in Canada, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia. These events don't have the newsworthiness of bird culling in the US, so unless it is your job to track influenza outbreaks, you probably haven't heard of them.
Yes, it was my job to track outbreaks. I'm retired now, but I still pay attention.
The reason avian influenza keeps popping up all over the world is because of the migratory patterns of wild birds. Birds from the Eastern and Western hemisphere migrate to the poles during the summer, where they intermingle. This not only spreads influenza among the birds, it gives the influenza virus ample opportunities to mutate and become new strains of viruses. Because of their unique biology, influenza viruses are the most rapidly mutating viruses known.
.........”I’ll just buy organic, non-vaxx chicken.”
where? I eat chicken three times a week, boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Moist and yummy. Recently looked up “Organic” and noone seems to have it.
I’ll just buy organic, non-vaxx chicken.
If there is no influenza RNA present, it is physically impossible to detect it with PCR.
Think of PCR as being similar to photocopying. If you put a sheet of paper on a (clean) copier, will you get an image if you copy it enough times? No. The only way you can get an image in the copies is if the image is on the original paper.
The only way I have ever detected something in PCR is if the thing was present in the original sample. And, due to how PCR works, sometimes the thing cannot be detected even if you know for a fact that it is present in the sample. So, you are more likely to get a negative result from a positive sample than a positive result from a negative sample.
I will point out that it is possible for cross-contaminations to cause false positives. We take measures against that, by cleaning our equipment, using special filtered pipettes, doing the work in a dedicated clean space, etc. But--if a negative sample comes up as a false positive, it means that the nucleic acid you are trying to detect *is* in the area, because it got into the reaction somehow. You can always run the samples again if you have doubts about the outcome.
I've run thousands (tens of thousands?) of PCR reactions. This is something I know quite well.
I know what PCR does. Doubles the quantity every cycle.
I was an analytical chemist. I know about things like limits of detection.
Just because PCR detects a piece of DNA at 1 part per quadrillion after 50 cycles does not mean the animal is sick or contagious.
Period.
So, can we eat vaxed chicken? Boneless, skinless free range chicken thighs are the only meat I eat. Looked up organic version months ago, and no store seems to have them.
I’m a serious anti-vaxer and so is my MD who sad no covid vax for me. Very healthy. One presciption drug, No flu shots. Had a cold about ten years ago.
[MEXICO – It authorised emergency vaccinations against the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain earlier this year.
The country is currently using two vaccines made by Avimex and Boheringher. By mid-February about 170 million vaccine doses had been administered by certified veterinarians.
Mexico, which has 557 million birds in its poultry industry, does not export poultry products. It has been forced to cull 5.9 million birds because of bird flu in the latest outbreak.
Other Central American countries including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are also buying the bird flu vaccines used by Mexico.
Mexico also vaccinated poultry against the H5N2 strain of bird flu in 1994 and the H7N3 strain in 2012.”]
The rest of the world hasn’t felt a need to jab its poultry for this, has it?
That Bird Flu is spread by migratory and local birds.
Doing look-up every couple of months or so, Canada and Mexico did not have the same nation wide problem that the US was reported to have.
I could not find if the two countries were using the PCR test that I found was the US “standard of use”.
‘All birds die from highly pathogenic avian influenza.’
ah so you’re an expert on all birds too, huh?
well if ‘all birds’ die from it why aren’t all birds extinct?
‘...a completely natural immune system function that works pretty much the same way no matter how it is induced to act.’
sounds like you claim the immune system is mechanistic and deterministic. this is false.
simple counter example to prove you wrong: why people including myself get sick (say colds and flu) when they are physically weak stressed and not get sick when they are physical strong and not under stress?
why do some individuals exposed the same way to an infections agent not get sick and others do, say on a Princess Cruise ship?
i can think of many other counter examples to your rather bold and i think ignorant statement, especially given the complexity of our immune systems. mammalian systems aren’t less complex. btw. no Christian believes in pure random chance.
now i’ll make a few statements, you’re welcome to rebut each one:
if there were no such thing as natural immunity, all life or bio-entities on earth would be extinct, including viri.
‘vaccines’ or ‘gene therapies’ are not ‘natural’. they are man made.
God has provided each creature on earth natural immunity and the ability to adapt.
nature, natural => God
‘Through Him all things were made; with Him nothing was made....’
‘In Him was life...’
my rebuke to your points given here are for others watching that they don’t get sucked into your pseudo-scientific lies and half-truths. but i stand and give my comment based on the word of God, and imho, my view has saved many lives even to my own family. personally, i like my animals, which have included chickens; i have refused vaccination for them even to the point of foregoing treatment at the vet because of state rules.
as for you FRiend, i advise you to ask for the wisdom of God. for he will give liberally to all without rebuke. may God bless you.
Indeed.
As can be said for ALL government interference.
There’s no way to definitively claim that ALL birds which catch bird flu die.
That implies a knowledge of the health of every single bird on the planet, and we all know that is impossible to achieve.
The rest of the world hasn’t felt a need to jab its poultry for this, has it?
The rest of the world uses the flu vaccine on chickens. Also salmonella vaccines-which is why eggs in Europe are not sold refrigerated.
yes, kind of a bold and god-like statement, isn’t it? sigh. there’s many a self-styled scientific expert who easily fancies their ‘science’ a replacement for God.
shrugs, the biological definition of a species specific pandemic that has an R0>1 will eventually infect every geographically reachable member of a genetic population. that assumes that its lethality is such that it allows time for the infection of others to happen. all birds out in the open are of course very ‘reachable’ and very hard to isolate.
the lethality actually works against the spread. so it depends on how much time the infection takes to kill. that is why i challenged her. all this is of course a math model and not real. i wanted to see if she could actually back up her bold statement.
All good points.
Even the plague did not kill everyone. Some survived.
I don’t know why they just don’t put tiny masks on the chickens and place their individual cages 6 feet apart, rub some hand sanitizer on their little feet and call it a day. These measures worked so well during Covid and saved so many lives that there are still some “in the know” people using them to this day. Saw a few of the idiots just yesterday.
Walmart and Sam’s Club for starters.
I don’t know your location, so I can’t do a DuckDuckGo search for you!
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