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Bird Flu Is Spreading in Alarming New Ways
H5N1 has infected cattle across the US and jumped from a mammal to a human for the first time. Experts fear it may someday evolve to spread among humans.
Maurice Pitesky, a researcher at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, told WIRED that in the past week, two of the biggest commercial poultry facilities in the US have reported an H5N1 outbreak, resulting in the euthanasia of nearly 4 million laying hens. As a recent example of what may ensue, Pitesky points to the repeated African swine fever outbreaks across various Asian countries in the past decade, which decimated the pig farming industry to the extent that pork was briefly usurped by poultry as the most widely consumed animal protein on the planet. Pitesky argues, however, that the current model of governments heavily compensating farmers for their livestock losses in the wake of a viral outbreak is financially unsustainable, and more investment needs to be diverted toward AI-driven technologies that can prevent these infections in the first place.
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