As a recent example of what may be happening, Pietsky pointed to recurring outbreaks of African swine fever in countries across Asia over the past decade, which has devastated the pig industry and once replaced pork with poultry as the most widely consumed animal protein. on this planet. However, Pietsky believes that the current model of huge government compensation for farmers’ livestock losses following virus outbreaks is economically unsustainable and that more investment needs to be directed towards AI-driven technologies to prevent these infections in the first place.
“I work on predictive models using a combination of weather radar, satellite imagery and machine learning to understand how waterfowl behavior is changing around different farms,” Pietsky said. “We can use this information to understand which of the 50,000 to 60,000 commercial poultry facilities in the United States are most at risk and develop strategies to protect all birds in these facilities.”
Technology may eventually provide a way to eliminate viruses from commercial poultry. In October, a team of researchers in the UK published a study in the journal nature communications It has been shown that chickens can be made resistant to avian influenza using the gene-editing tool Crispr. This is done by editing the genes in chickens that produce the proteins ANP32A, ANP32B and ANP32E, which the virus uses to enter chicken cells.
Crispr has been shown to render livestock resistant to other infections, such as the cancer-causing viral diseases avian leukemia and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, which have caused widespread economic losses on pig farms.
Lead researcher on the project, Alewo Idoko-Akoh of the University of Bristol, said: “The currently available approach is to use strict on-farm biosecurity measures to vaccinate poultry in some countries. vaccination, and large-scale reduction of infected or exposed flocks.” nature communications study. “These approaches have been partially successful but have so far failed to prevent recurring outbreaks of avian influenza around the world. Gene editing of chickens to introduce disease resistance should be considered an additional tool to prevent or limit the spread of avian influenza.”
Pietsky called the paper “very interesting,” but noted that for it to be commercially viable, widespread public acceptance of eating gene-edited chicken would also be needed. “I think there’s a lot of potential for these technological solutions, but the most important issue is people’s perception of genetically modified chickens, especially in the United States,” he said.
Iqbal said the best chance of controlling bird flu now is more active surveillance of animal populations around the world to understand how and where the H5N1 virus is spreading.
“Surveillance systems have improved and any infection that appears unusual is thoroughly investigated,” he said of the situation in the United States. “This helps identify unusual outbreaks, such as infections in goats and cattle.” However, he said more work is needed to detect the virus in animals that show no signs of disease.