Yes, this sounds like an attempt to force veganism on the common people. Gates, $oros, $uck, Winfrey, etc. will continue enjoying their prime beef, caviar, lobster, and whatever else they want, however.
You can blame Chinese birds for the first instance of bird flu crossing over to infect humans back in 1997 (when Hong Kong effectively culled their entire poultry population to kill the H5N1 virus) for the current methodology of how we treat bird flu: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787969/