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Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

> The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans.

The reason the US has been culling is because they refuse to vaccinate chickens. Even China began vaccinations in 2004 ... over 2 decades ago.

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Perhaps that's why Chinese chicken eggs cost:

3,062 CNY/T -> $422/tonne -> $0.287/dozen @ 24 oz / dozen large eggs [1]

while US eggs are still nonsensically priced at $8.03 / dozen. [2] Like worldwide logistics doesn't even exist. Seems like a market discrepancy when there's several 100 to 1000 cargo ships transiting the Pacific currently that might be loaded with 3,062 CNY/T ($0.29/dozen) eggs.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-ch

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us

Here's a rabbit hole to go down:

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/caring/index.html

What is a "150-day fallow"?

It means waiting 150 days after eliminating all the chickens in an area for any virus remaining in that area to no longer be viable.

I mean, it'd be absolutely awful if we started having to deal w/ autistic chickens. I can't imagine how the Chinese do it.

Sarcasm aside, if the US isn't vaccinating our birds, what are the drivers for that? Cost concerns?

Probably cost previously, certainly ideology now

Not exactly cost concerns but it’s definitely economic in nature. The US exports a lot of poultry (broilers, not eggs) and the importers test for avian flu with tests that are incapable of differentiating between a vaccinated bird and an infected one. If we were to vaccinate our birds, the broiler farmers would lose access to the much more lucrative export markets. Since the market is so competitive domestically, that would essentially spell the end for much of the industry (which is a national security concern, aka never gonna happen).

Instead the US performs cullings and reimburses the farmers, which has the knock on effect of wiping out all the egg laying hens our own domestic market depends on to protect the broiler export markets.

So the cost of "162,770,988 poultry affected as of 2/20/2025" is less than the cost of loss of export of chickens or of developing a better test?

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html?co...

I can believe the export market is much larger than the number of chickens killed so far, but the cost of developing a better test seems likely to be lower, especially given future outbreaks.

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