Highly pathogenic avian influenza has caused unprecedented wild bird mortality events globally, creating welfare emergencies while revealing the complex interactions between wild birds, poultry, and human health.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza creates welfare emergencies at a scale that challenges welfare response capacity. The neurological symptoms of HPAI — disorientation, seizures, and progressive incapacitation — involve suffering that occurs across thousands to millions of individual birds during major outbreaks. Wild birds cannot be treated and can rarely be euthanized before dying naturally. The spillover to poultry triggers mass culling events where methods used for rapid depopulation may not be optimal for minimizing suffering. Building welfare consideration into avian influenza response planning — particularly for poultry depopulation methods — is a practical step that can reduce harm even when eliminating it is impossible.