Kennedy’s alarming prescription for bird flu on poultry farms

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,” Kennedy said.

Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences.

Since January 2022, there have been more than 1,600 outbreaks reported on farms and backyard flocks, occurring in every state. More than 166 million birds have been affected.

Every infection is another opportunity for the virus, called H5N1, to evolve into a more virulent form. Geneticists have been tracking its mutations closely; so far, the virus has not developed the ability to spread among people.

But if H5N1 were to be allowed to run through a flock of 5 million birds, “that’s literally 5 million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.

Large numbers of infected birds are likely to transmit massive amounts of the virus, putting farmworkers and other animals at great risk.

“So now you’re setting yourself up for bad things to happen,” Hansen said. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Kennedy’s comments were aimed at protecting people “from the most dangerous version of the current bird flu, which is found in chickens.”

“Culling puts people at the highest risk of exposure, which is why Secretary Kennedy and NIH want to limit culling activities,” she said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “Culling is not the solution. Strong biosecurity is.”

In her plan to combat bird flu, Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, 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 USDA is beginning those efforts in just 10 states.

Kennedy has suggested that a subset of poultry might be naturally immune to bird flu. But chickens and turkeys lack the genes needed to resist the virus, experts said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company