Bird flu effects on health and the economy

It’s a rhetorical question, but have you noticed the price of eggs in the supermarket lately? No mistaking it. Prices are up—way up!! In fact, eggs are costing about 30 percent more today than just a year ago. Know why? The answer: fewer chickens. 

The reason there are fewer chickens—the starting point for eggs—is avian flu. Since 2022 as many as 100 million chickens have been euthanized across the country, including an estimated 6.3 million in Colorado. 

While there have been cases in which this virus has been fatal in human beings, it rarely results in death. But it does have its own way of navigating its way through the food chain.  

To date, slightly less than 70 human cases of bird flu have been documented across the country, but precautionary measures are being taken to minimize its impact. 

Bird flu first appeared in 1997 and has spread across the globe. Because migratory birds are usually the carriers of the virus, controlling and containing it has been, to date, impossible.

While chickens are the most visible victims of the virus, it also affects wild birds, including raptors who feed on birds in which the virus has been fatal. From there, through droppings, often ingested or even inhaled by cattle, the disease spreads. 

In just the last nine months, the CDC reports that bird flu (H5N1) has infected more than 700 herds across 15 states, including Colorado. In fact, last July Colorado’s cases of the virus were tops in the country. The state also reported humans in Colorado had contracted the disease. Numbers have stabilized.

Most of those infected were dairy workers who may have been splashed while milking the animals or touching the udders of infected animals. But some of the milk of infected animals has made its way to the public and sold as raw milk, that is, milk that has not been pasteurized. 

Pasteurized milk, including milk from cows, sheep and goats, is milk that has been heated to a temperature that kills certain, dangerous bacteria. The method has been in use for more than a century and is named for Louis Pasteur. While it has been a favored method for processing milk, the method really took off in the 1950’s and, said the CDC, dramatically reduced the number of people getting sick.

California, a state that allows for the sale of unpasteurized milk, recently suspended the sale of raw milk and also quarantined herds where the virus has been found. No humans, said the CDC, have so far been found to be infected from drinking the product.

But raw milk, a vector for the virus, is also regularly touted by the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, the agency that is charged with protecting the nation’s health. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., regularly encourages drinking only raw milk for the health benefits. 

While bird flu poses no threat of morphing into a pandemic, it does have a contemporary history that has been devastating for birds, especially chickens. 

In the last twenty years, there have been three major outbreaks of the H5N1 virus. The first, in 2005, was mostly confined to Asia and stretched for five years. It resulted in the slaughter of nearly 60 million chickens. The second and third waves of bird flu spanned 2011 to 2019 resulting in a combined fatality of an estimated 333 million birds.

While the price of eggs has risen dramatically, the same cannot be said for the price of chicken. The reason is life span. A bird raised for its meat has a much shorter lifespan than an egg laying one. The former’s life runs about 6 to 9 weeks from hatching to slaughter. A hen raised for egg production has an average life span of 100 weeks on average. Basically, it has more time to contract the virus.  

Also, while avian flu has been catastrophic for chickens resulting in unspeakably high death rates, the same cannot be said for cattle that contract the virus. The reason, scientists say, is “low pathogenic,” that is cows usually recover though the recovery period usually means far less or no production of milk. 

In 2023, Colorado ranked 13th in milk producing states. But there was a time earlier this year that the number of infected cows was at or near the highest in the nation. The rate seemed alarming but only because of the percentage of animals and not the aggregate numbers.

As long as the virus lingers, it will have far more impact on the economy—the price of eggs—than human health. Unless you are an agriculture worker and work in close proximity to certain animals, the chances of contracting bird flu are low, said Colorado state veterinarian Dr. Maggie Baldwin.

The bird flu virus, Baldwin said, “likes to hang around.” Once the virus lands and secures a foundation in a herd, she said, “It’s really hard to mitigate.” But with “strong biosecurity,” she said, bird flu can be contained in the geographic region in which it has been identified.