Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the federal public health agencies oppose using a bird flu vaccine on poultry.

“All three of my health agencies – NIH, CDC, and FDA – the acting heads of those agencies – have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine,” RFK Jr. said.

“The vaccine could actually promote antigenic shift, which means you’re turning those birds into mutant factories, and that could actually accelerate the jump to human beings,” he continued.

RFK Jr. added there’s never been known human-t0-human transmission of bird flu.

WATCH:

CBS News reports:

Federal health agencies oppose the use of bird flu vaccines in poultry right now, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, weighing in publicly on it for the first time in his new role. The Trump administration has been considering poultry vaccination as it seeks to combat the outbreak that is fueling a record surge in egg prices.

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U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said last month that they were ramping up planning on potentially deploying a vaccine for poultry, with the hopes of putting a draft of the plan before trading partners “as quickly as possible,” since it could affect billions of dollars in exports.

“There’s no indication that those vaccines actually provide sterilizing immunity and all three of my health agencies, NIH, CDC, and FDA, the acting heads of those agencies have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine,” Kennedy said in an interview on Fox News published this week.

Sterilizing immunity means vaccine protection that completely stops infections and spread. Vaccines are rarely able to offer this kind of effectiveness, though the USDA said last month it would step up investments in “potential new generation vaccines” with better protection.

Kennedy’s remarks mark a sharp turn from the Biden administration, multiple former officials said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart that bird flu vaccines for poultry are “off the table.”

Bird Flu Vaccines For Chickens “Off The Table,” USDA Secretary Says

Initially, Rollins announced a $1 billion plan the USDA formulated to alleviate soaring egg prices.

One part of the plan was to research possible vaccines for livestock, such as chickens and cattle, against bird flu.

Rollins told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation this week that “not enough research has been done” on bird flu vaccines for livestock.

WATCH:

Rollins told Breitbart that she pulled vaccines “off the table” after learning how ineffective such vaccines are in other countries.

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Per Breitbart:

The fifth plank of the plan, though, was the exploration of possible vaccines of livestock like chickens or cattle against the avian flu. But Rollins told Breitbart News that as she has learned more about such proposals, this will not be an effective way to deal with the issue—and ruled it out as a possibility, saying “I pulled that off the table” upon learning how ineffective such vaccines have been in other nations like Mexico.

“The fifth one, that has perhaps taken a little bit more of the space than I had assumed was the vaccine piece,” Rollins said. “The idea was that, initially before I rolled the plan out, the thought was maybe the vaccine is the solution here and that maybe we need to stick a couple hundred million chickens with vaccines so we could potentially move out of this crisis quicker. But what I learned is that looking at countries like Mexico that actually do vaccinate their egg-layers is that those chickens have to be stuck three or four or five times with those vaccine shots and then 80 to 83 percent of those chickens still get the avian bird flu. So I pulled that off the table and for a lot of reasons we are not going to be moving off the table on mandatory vaccines now or frankly ever. So putting that money into the research into making sure it’s effective and safe and in my conversations with the NIH and the CDC and others there are some real concerns on the vaccine side. One of my favorite and it sort of affected me significantly was Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska who is a fifth-generation farmer and is also a veterinarian, he said to me ‘Brooke, don’t ever forget, the virus always wins.’ I think that’s what we’re seeing. So that’s been an interesting piece of this, and I think the research on therapeutics is going to be very important perhaps pivoting away from a vaccine if necessary. And one other thing that has been falsely reported in the news is that the USDA approved a dairy cattle vaccine for the avian bird flu and that just was wrong. I think that has just moved into the process, but that won’t even get to my desk for another year or so. So a lot has to be done there, but also if at all possible the goal would be to move away from that as the answer.”

Rollins elaborated in a followup answer saying that “absolutely not,” the vaccine will never be mandated for livestock, and any voluntary consideration of any such vaccines is at least a year away, probably longer if it is ever considered.

“Right now, the answer is absolutely not based on all of the research,” Rollins said. “I’ve visited an avian flu research facility last week. I’m going to another one next week in Georgia. I’m in constant contact with our veterinarians and our state Ag Commissioners. It seems like a very simple and easy and quick answer but ultimately the repercussions that we don’t fully understand could be so significant that we just have to go in a different direction. So again I think there is some misinformation out there, and mis-reporting, that USDA is somehow moving at light speed toward a vaccine of dairy cattle and egg-layers but the 100 percent answer to that is no, it’s not true, and we have a tremendous amount of work to do before we would even consider that as a potential solution and that is at least a year or more away.”

 

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