[Opinion] Culling livestock to fight a respiratory virus is a bad idea

TL;DR: Fighting a respiratory virus by culling chickens is a bad idea: It doesn't work; high food prices hit vulnerable people the hardest; and it creates counterproductive evolutionary pressures.

Introduction

In recent weeks, the American media has begun to focus on the currently elevated price of eggs. For example (via Brave Search):

It seems that one of the primary reasons that egg prices are high, and expected to remain that way, is because hen farmers are being required to cull their flocks as a result of bird flu outbreaks. This is described by The Independent as follows,

Skyrocketing egg prices are largely the result of a widespread bird flu outbreak that forced a mass culling of egg-laying birds. With fewer birds, there are fewer eggs, and with scarcity comes increased cost.

It seems to me that this mandatory culling is a really bad idea. Why? Three reasons:

It doesn't work.
The resultant high prices hit marginalized communities the hardest
The evolutionary result of this policy will be bird flu variants that spread more easily and are harder to detect.

Let's look at all three arguments.

It doesn't work

^{Source: Google Trends - 12 month search interest in "bird flu" in the United States}

As I understand it, the argument for culling the animals is to stop the spread, but we all saw how that strategy works with COVID-19. The idea is that a virus can be contained like a forest fire, by inserting "firewalls" between virus outbreaks. However, it seems clear that this strategy has been historically ineffective. Despite months of culling, there's no apparent end in sight.

Further, COVID lockdowns may have changed the times and places where the disease emerged, but in the end everyone who was susceptible got the disease. The only thing that eventually reduced the danger from COVID-19 was the emergence of the less dangerous delta and omicron strains. This is the normal course of viral evolution. Viruses typically evolve to become more communicative and less lethal. For COVID-19, this was already anticipated in March, 2020.

There is an inverse relationship between lethality and contagiousness; that is, the most contagious viruses tend to be less lethal. Evolutionary pressures – namely, the biological imperative to reproduce as far and wide as possible (which means not killing people) – may push COVID-19 down this path.

Basically, when there are reservoirs of wild animals and evolutionary selection in the mix, the "firewall containment" model of disease prevention is naïve and ineffective.

The resultant high prices hit marginalized communities the hardest.

Eggs go into many of the other products that we eat, so the downstream effect of higher prices also raises the prices of many other products.

If someone is just barely making ends meet from week to week, any uptick in prices will lower their standard of living. The affluent can absorb the cost increases, but the marginalized simply can't.

It's unavoidable that some vulnerable people will experience irreversible harm from a policy like this.

Evolutionarily, culling flocks will make the bird flu virus stealthier

About ten years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a reptile exhibit down in the Florida Everglades. One of the striking things that I learned in that exhibit is that rattle snakes in the United States no longer rattle a warning before they strike.

According to the speaker, this is a result of selective hunting pressure on the species. For the last 150+ years, hunters have been targeting the rattle snake, and the ones that rattled in warning were the easiest to kill, which means they received less opportunities to reproduce. In the end, the "rattle before striking" trait has now been eliminated from the species.

I imagine a similar effect from culling the flocks. The easy to detect and less communicable variants of the virus will be reduced or eliminated, but the ones that remain will be harder to detect and more communicable.

Also, large scale evolutionary selection like this will only increase the speed of mutation. If the concern is that the virus might evolve to be easily transmitted to humans, culling the flocks may be accelerating the time when that happens.

Conclusion

Admittedly, I have not read the literature on the matter, so this is just an intuitive take on the topic. If the scientific literature supports the policy, however, the regulators need to make this case to the public before they tamper with food markets and raise the price of such a foundational food as eggs. They need to demonstrate to the public at large that the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. To my knowledge, this type of a public demonstration has not been made.

So, I'll wrap up by restating my opinion. Culling chicken flocks as a method of controlling the spread of bird flu is a really bad idea. It's a bad idea because it doesn't seem to work; it's a bad idea because the elevated prices hit vulnerable people the hardest; and it's a bad idea because it creates evolutionary pressure that will tend to lead to worse outcomes in the future.

Addendum: I asked Brave Leo what I missed, and the LLM added these points: Biosecurity measures (cleaning, disinfection, restrictions on movement, etc.) can provide an alternative; vaccine development may provide an alternative; culling chicken flocks reduces genetic diversity; International coordination and other alternatives can be explored. On the other hand, the LLM also added that the impact to the vulnerable should be weighted against the possible trade disruptions and production losses that could arise without the flock-culling policies.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

^{Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.}

^{Pixabay license, source}

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