On March 11th, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “Most of our scientists are against the culling operation.” He was referring to those scientists in the Trump administration. Others disagree, believing that culling is the only answer. RFK Jr. appears to favor natural immunity over the culling process.
Culling has been the go-to prescription for bird flu since its outbreak began, and it’s still spreading and getting worse while mutating. It’s safe to say that if culling worked, it would at least be slowing the spread of the virus.
RFK Jr.: Mass Vaccination Of Birds Could Turn Them Into “Mutation Factories” For Bird Flu
In mid-March 2025, US authorities recorded the first outbreak of another deadly form of the virus, H7N9 — the first such outbreak since 2017. –DW
“You should let the disease go through them and identify the birds that survive, which are the birds that probably have a genetic inclination for immunity, and those are the birds that we should breed, like the wild population,” Kennedy said.
“I don’t think it makes sense from a scientific point of view, […] even for the US […] especially if it generates its own pandemics through such policies,” Theo Bourgeron, a health and finance sociologist at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, said. He claims that think tanks prepared to support a “let-the-virus-spread doctrine” during the early phases of the pandemic in the UK.
“The Trump administration and government was elected to some extent, and promoted by, social forces, such as tech and finance billionaires, whose founding idea is that the state and taxpayer, the Treasury, should not pay for the prevention of environmental catastrophes,” Bourgeron said.
T. Jacob John, a medical virologist known for his work on infectious diseases in India, told DW that a policy to let the virus spread was both unethical in terms of public health and a threat to the farming industry. “The goal of medicine is to prevent mortality and morbidity. If you have a tool to reduce either, [not doing so] is unethical,” John said. “If mortality or case-fatality is 95%, the entire industry will collapse.
“Culling within a prescribed circumference is cruel to some, but lifesaving for the remaining birds. This approach has always stopped spread beyond the time of culling — and saved the industry,” John said.
HPAI Bird Flu Continues Its Spread To Mammals
