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," Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.
He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.
Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.
"There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity," Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.
Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences.
"That's a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons," said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.
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 five million birds, "that's literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate," Dr. Hansen said.
Large numbers of infected birds are likely to transmit massive amounts of the virus, putting farm workers and other animals at great risk.
"So now you're setting yourself up for bad things to happen," Dr. Hansen said. "It's a recipe for disaster."
