Avian Influenza Welfare Implications 2025: Beyond Culling

Key Facts

• Over 200 million birds were culled for AI control globally in 2024-2025, raising major welfare concerns
• Culling methods include CO2 gassing, electrocution, and water-based foam (WBF) — welfare quality varies enormously
• Preventive culling of birds in contact zones, before infection is confirmed, is the most welfare-costly element of control
• Vaccination programs (now adopted in France, Netherlands) offer a welfare-preserving alternative to prophylactic culling
• Wild bird AI reservoirs mean biosecurity rather than surveillance-driven culling is the primary farm-level tool

Welfare Considerations

AI culling operations represent one of the largest acute animal welfare events in modern animal production. The welfare impact of culling billions of birds over successive seasons — including healthy birds in contact zones — is enormous and largely invisible to consumers. Culling method quality is critical: carbon dioxide gassing at recommended concentrations is the benchmark, but rapid deployment in on-farm emergencies frequently compromises welfare through inadequate concentrations, overcrowding, and inadequate exposure time. Vaccination, now approved in France and the Netherlands, represents a paradigm shift that can dramatically reduce both culling numbers and welfare suffering while maintaining trade status with appropriate testing protocols.

What You Can Do

• Advocate for AI vaccination programs to be adopted globally as a welfare-sparing alternative to culling
• Support research into improved, rapid-deployment humane culling methods for use in emergency on-farm situations
• Engage with policy debates about preventive culling zones and advocate for evidence-based rather than precautionary zone sizes
• Purchase poultry from farms with high biosecurity standards that reduce AI introduction risk
• Support international coordination on AI vaccination acceptance to remove trade barriers to welfare-preserving approaches