Bird Flu: A Crisis with No End in Sight

Cruelty for dinner: Birds on factory farms are sometimes killed by a method known as “ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+),” in which farmers cut off airflow and heat the barns to 104°F until the animals die from heatstroke. (Photo credit: Stefano Belacchi/Equalia/We Animals Media)

As February 2025 begins, the US continues to face ongoing avian influenza (bird flu) outbreaks, particularly the H5N1 strain. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the past year, more than 150 million birds have been affected spanning all 50 states and Puerto Rico, with nearly 18 million birds depopulated in the last 30 days alone. Additionally, the virus has been detected in 956 dairy herds across 16 states.

In January 2025, both Georgia Department of Agriculture and The West Virginia Department of Agriculture (WVDA), suspended all poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales at flea markets or auction markets in response to the ongoing threat of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

On January 27, 2025, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) sent out a notification that the highly pathogenic H5N9 avian flu has been identified for the first time in US poultry, on a duck meat farm in California. According to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, “Both H5N9 and H5N1 were detected at the duck farm in Merced County,… State officials quarantined the affected farm, and a culling operation of the facility's nearly 119,000 birds was completed on December 2.”

USDA Reported H5N1 Bird Flu Detections in Poultry

Since the initial confirmation of H5N1 in 1998, we’ve seen recurring large-scale episodes of outbreak in 2003, 2005, 2015, and again in 2022. When an outbreak occurs, the industry’s solution is mass extermination. "Depopulation" — a clinical euphemism for mass killing — has become the standard response, with methods ranging from gassing to ventilation shutdown, where birds are killed by suffocation and heat stroke. These are acts of cruelty on an unfathomable scale, sanctioned by policymakers and shielded from public scrutiny and often funded by taxpayers through government bailouts and subsidies.

Biosecurity is frequently mentioned as the best way to control outbreaks, but the real problem is animal farming itself. The confinement of millions of animals on farms creates the ideal conditions for deadly disease outbreaks. According to a February 2, 2025 NPR article, “Since the last bird flu outbreak in 2015, farms have invested millions of dollars into biosecurity. But none of that has been enough to contain the outbreak that started three years ago.”

A tractor carries a load of dead turkeys infected with H5N1 out from the shed where they were killed during a disposal operation at a farm with an avian influenza outbreak. Wymondham, Norfolk, United Kingdom, 2022. (Photo credit: Ed Shephard/Generation Vegan/We Animals Media)

Individual consumers must recognize their responsibility in this crisis. Every dollar spent on animal products is a vote for a system that guarantees suffering, disease, and environmental destruction. As Dr. Karen Davis stated in her podcast Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) – Fiction versus Fact, “The only way to end the nightmare is to stop producing chickens and other animals for food. The only way to accomplish this is for consumers to wash their hands once and for all of the misery of animal consumption and choose animal-free, plant-based foods instead. Mass production and mass consumption of billions and billions of living creatures can never be made hygienic or humane.”

– Liqin Cao & Franklin Wade, United Poultry Concerns