By Taylor Hinds

Five years after COVID-19 reshaped our world, the pandemic's lingering effects serve as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of infectious diseases. As we grapple with the aftermath, a new threat is emerging, lurking in animals: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), or H5N1. Though currently classified as a wildlife pandemic, this virus, which has already infected and killed humans, is raising alarm bells. The origins of COVID-19 were hotly debated—did it come from a bat, a pangolin, or a lab? This time, the origin is clear: this virus came to us from farms.

Calling H5N1 a "new" threat is somewhat of a misnomer. The precursor to the virus that first infected humans was diagnosed on a goose farm in China almost 30 years ago. Before that, Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza (LPAI)—a virus with less severe consequences—had been circulating in wild birds. Indeed, this was the bird flu story for many years. HPAI was a disease of poultry, with outbreaks causing severe symptoms, death, and culls, while LPAI was a mild, nonfatal disease of wild birds. A major spillover into wildlife in the mid-2000s caused the virus to spread as far as Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, affecting people, mammals, and wild birds, who became sick and often died. This was a significant spread, but the virus was short-lived in each population, as that strain did not survive well through the year. For the most part, HPAI remained contained in poultry. However, in 2020, a new, highly contagious, deadly, and robust strain emerged. This strain could persist year-round, spreading rapidly through migrating wild birds, reaching North America in 2021, South America in 2022, and even Antarctica by 2024.

By 2024, the virus had jumped beyond birds and poultry, infecting over 26 mammal species, including seals, foxes, and even bears. It decimated poultry farms and began ravaging dairy herds across the United States. Human infections have also been reported, with the CDC confirming 67 cases and one fatality. Currently, the virus is primarily bird-specific, causing conjunctivitis (mild to severe eye infections) in humans. It transmits between birds, between birds (dead or alive) and humans, between cattle, and between cattle and humans. While human-to-human transmission hasn't been confirmed, a single mutation could change that, allowing the virus to spread easily among people and potentially cause more severe illness. This possibility is a major cause for concern.

The real culprit behind this looming threat isn't wild birds, but industrial animal agriculture. The sheer volume of production in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs, or factory farms) necessitates raising vast numbers of animals in close confinement. These conditions, coupled with genetic similarity and stress, create ideal breeding grounds for viruses. A virus that infects one animal can quickly spread through millions, and each new infection provides an opportunity for mutation, adaptation, and increased severity. These farms act as both the source and the reservoir for the virus. Wild birds spread it, and the farms concentrate it, facilitating its mutation and further spread. The co-location of different species, like poultry and cattle, further complicates the situation, creating opportunities for the virus to jump to new hosts, as seen with the recent spread in dairy cows. Furthermore, farms are one of the few places where humans have regular contact with large numbers of animals, increasing the risk of human infection.

Beyond the animal welfare implications and the devastating impact on wildlife, these outbreaks have significant economic consequences. Mass culls lead to losses for farmers, government bailouts, and rising prices for consumers, as seen with the recent skyrocketing egg prices. If the virus worsens and becomes more deadly to cows, rising dairy prices and supply shortages will be next.

Zoonotic diseases like HPAI are not a bug in the system of industrial animal agriculture; they're a feature. While many potential solutions are being explored, they fail to address the root cause. Culling, the default option, is not a long-term solution. Vaccination of poultry and livestock, while promising, faces logistical challenges and may even promote viral evolution if not implemented comprehensively (a challenge when there are over 9.8 billion chickens and turkeys farmed every year globally). Genetic engineering, using gene-editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9 to make chickens resistant to influenza, is also an option, but it hasn't proved very effective and would create regulation and trade issues.

Other half-solutions, like human vaccination and antiviral medications, address only the public health aspect. Moderna, for example, was recently awarded $590 million by the US Department of Health and Human Services to create mRNA vaccines for humans, just in case it becomes a human-specific disease. These are the same type of vaccines developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus we could probably expect a similar public reaction, not to mention the issues of healthcare coverage for farmworkers who are often undocumented or lacking health insurance. Antiviral medications are available and fairly effective in treating H5N1 in humans, but we only have to look to antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria to know what happens if antivirals are abused. We should be very grateful that both vaccines and medication already exist for this virus, but this should be regarded as a last resort. They may hamper the spread and lessen the impact of the virus as long as they remain effective, but if the virus mutates, we may be out of luck. And on top of this, these measures will only protect human health, and not the wildlife, farm animals, farmer livelihoods, or food prices at risk.

The most effective solution lies in disrupting the animal agriculture industry itself. Precision fermentation, a technology that uses microbes to produce animal proteins in bioreactors, offers a disruptive alternative. This technology is not new, but recent cost reductions have made it viable for large-scale protein production. As the cost continues to decrease, precision fermentation will become cheaper than traditional animal agriculture, requiring less land, water, and feed, while eliminating the conditions that foster disease spread. This technology can produce the very proteins currently affected by HPAI, namely dairy and egg proteins. In fact, companies like Perfect Day, Remilk, Imagindairy, Vivici, TurtleTree, New Culture, and EVERY have already achieved regulatory approval to sell these types of proteins in the US and abroad. Combined with other technologies like cellular agriculture, which produces meat tissue without animals, precision fermentation represents a fundamental shift in food production. The truth is that many of the same technologies used to develop and produce these vaccines and antivirals, as well as to sequence and characterize the virus, are the same precision biology technologies that can be used to produce proteins and other food products directly through precision fermentation. Instead of using our best biotechnologies to play catch-up with viruses, we should be using them to produce food in such a way that doesn’t run the risk of zoonotic disease.

Disruption occurs when a new technology offers a significantly better and cheaper alternative. Precision fermentation is poised to be that disruptive force in animal agriculture. As these technologies scale and costs fall, they will undercut the economic viability of traditional farming. Farmers will face declining revenues, leading to herd reductions and ultimately the collapse of the industrial animal agriculture system. This disruption is key to preventing future zoonotic disease outbreaks. By removing the conditions that allow viruses to thrive, we can create a more resilient and healthy food system.

HPAI and other zoonotic diseases are a very real threat to human health, the environment, and animal welfare, now and in the future. While the current strain of HPAI poses a limited threat to humans, the potential for mutation and human-to-human transmission is a serious and growing concern. We've seen the devastating impact of pandemics like COVID-19. We cannot afford to be complacent. The challenge now is to accelerate the development and deployment of precision fermentation and cellular agriculture technologies. The greatest barrier to scale-up for precision fermentation at the moment is production capacity. The technology has already been proven to work in many different product markets and has already jumped the hurdle of regulation, with several proteins and cell lines approved for sale in the US and in other countries around the world. The industry needs government, business, and investment support in developing the biotechnology infrastructure in the form of production facilities and bioreactors so that they can get the scale needed to further drop the price and increase the supply. The disruption of animal agriculture is not just desirable; it's essential for preventing future pandemics and ensuring a healthier future for all.

For more information on the disruption of food and agriculture, please visit The Future of Food & Agriculture | RethinkX.