If we took a step back, we might see that our approach is failing to address the drivers of emerging diseases and doing little to build resilience to them.
We are surpassing a grim historic milestone: more than 100 million chickens and turkeys dead or culled due to highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Since the start of this outbreak in 2022, we have heard from many experts about the alarming ways that this strain of H5N1 in animals could be transmitted to people and cause a pandemic. We’ve also heard from the government that our agencies are relatively unalarmed: The outbreak in animals is under control, and the risk to the human population is low.
Our nearly 40 combined years working in disaster science and policy alarms us about something else: the inattention we see not only to the underlying drivers of emerging infectious diseases like avian flu but also to the mangled incentive structures that characterize prevention and preparedness for H5N1 and other disasters.
Let’s put this in perspective. Comprehensive depopulation, or culling, at affected poultry farms, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s official policy to “stamp out” the spread of any strain of a high-path bird-flu virus. A 2015 outbreak resulted in more than 50 million dead birds from disease and culling.
This was the highest mortality number the U.S. had ever seen to that point and represented an aggressive, five-month push to eradicate the pathogen. Which it did — until it reappeared in Indiana seven months later.
The approach is not working. Constantly evolving strains of the virus circulate relentlessly in wild birds, catching a free ride North, South, East and West across massive migratory bird flyways. This ever-present source of transmission to domestic species, combined with the almost incomprehensible numbers of farmed animals in the United States (about 10 billion per year), makes this a problem that the status quo way of doing things is ill-conceived to address.
Few policymakers are speaking of the 100 million. Most of them are incentivized to swallow that number in exchange for the electoral compensation — votes — that comes with it. Votes come from responses to disasters, not preparedness for them. This reality is usually driven by financial resources that flow to people in the response and recovery phases of disasters.
With H5N1, the government is reimbursing poultry producers for birds culled due to an outbreak on their premises; this incentivizes poultry producers to report suspected flu outbreaks, and early.
Here’s what the USDA pays them for: indemnity for each culled bird, depopulation and disposal, compensation for materials destroyed and “virus elimination” such as disinfection of housing structures. As of the start of this year, indemnity payments alone were at $715 million; total costs are likely well over $1 billion by now. Bipartisan legislation would further increase compensation levels.
Why not just vaccinate? Vaccinating flocks would, according to current trade agreements, prohibit export to many countries and thereby preclude huge earnings from the $5 billion poultry export sector. Vaccination is, therefore, prohibited.
What this means is that many flocks are probably culled despite being predominantly healthy. It also means that producers are incentivized to raise as many animals as possible in the ways that they always have.
We see the incentive dysfunction playing out in the virus’ latest victim, dairy cows. Despite a dire need for data on how this virus is behaving in cows, much of the industry appears disinterested in sharing samples and information federally. The USDA has only mandated testing for the subset of cattle crossing state lines and is trying to incentivize further testing of herds by covering the cost and by paying producers for lost milk production in confirmed cases of infection.
The taxpayer already subsidizes the dairy industry to the tune of $20 billion annually, and the government is now feeling forced to infuse even more money into an already massively subsidized system in return for basic information that could help stop the next pandemic.
The crop and commodity subsidy system has its roots in the Great Depression, a historical event that dramatically incentivized the federal government to provide aid to farmers to help ensure the food supply and a livelihood for the people supplying the food. However, it has become outdated and even harmful in its present state. Research shows how federal subsidies for the food system can inflate prices, exacerbate overproduction and worsen the obesity epidemic.
Throwing money at the response in this way is a symptom of a broader malady in governance, one that subsidizes entrenched entitlements while failing to take preparedness steps that would garner little attention from the electorate but would meaningfully advance change.
Our analysis of the culling data shows that some of the months with the highest death tolls have occurred quite recently. Culling isn’t working. If we took a step back, we might see that our approach is failing to address the drivers of emerging diseases and doing little to build resilience to them.
Throughout the dysfunction, the pandemic risk to people rises, and the brutal toll on the welfare of millions of animals, both domesticated and wild, goes untold.
Ellen P. Carlin is a veterinarian and the founder of Parapet Science & Policy Consulting. Jeff Schlegelmilch is the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School, Columbia University. They are the authors of "Catastrophic Incentives: Why Our Approaches to Disasters Keep Falling Short."
