Vets and animal advocates in the US are calling for restrictions on “cruel” methods of culling birds, as farmers face killing millions of poultry due to a highly virulent avian flu tearing through the country.
In 2020, millions of farm animals were killed across the US after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down slaughterhouses and left animals stranded on farms. Now, bird flu, which has already led to the slaughter of millions of birds in Europe, is likely to result in another mass depopulation.
More than 50 million chickens and turkeys were killed after an aggressive bird flu outbreak in the US in 2015.
However, two commonly used methods to cull animals on-farm are attracting increasing backlash. The use of firefighting foam to suffocate animals and ventilation shutdown, in which animals are killed with extremely high heat and steam, are still permitted in the US, despite being effectively banned in the EU and labelled “inhumane”.
Poultry flocks sickened with avian flu are commonly killed with carbon dioxide poisoning or firefighting foam, where birds are smothered with a blanket of foam.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says the method involves “drowning in fluids or suffocation by occlusion of the airways” and is “not accepted as a humane method for killing animals”.
It is also not listed as a method of killing animals for disease control by the main animal health body, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
