Bird flu vaccines for laying hens are effective in practice, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, while confirming plans to vaccinate poultry against the virus that has ravaged flocks around the world and is raising fears about human transmission.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has killed or caused the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry globally in the past few years, most of them laying hens, which sent egg prices rocketing.
Research in the laboratory of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research early last year had already shown that two vaccines against bird flu, produced by France’s Ceva Animal Health and Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim, were effective against the virus, but no experiments were conducted on a farm.
Photo: AP
“In September 2023, 1,800 day-old chicks were vaccinated against bird flu. The results show that the two tested vaccines are effective against infection with the virus eight weeks after vaccination,” the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality said in a statement.
“The fact that the vaccines work in practice is a very important step toward the large-scale vaccination of poultry against the bird flu virus,” it said.
Bird flu is raising mounting concerns as the disease is increasingly spreading to mammals.
The tests were carried out at two laying farms by Wageningen University & Research, the Royal GD animal health service and Utrecht University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, the ministry said.
More transmission trials would be conducted over the next year and a half to assess the vaccines’ effectiveness during the entire laying period, the ministry said.
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