RFK Jr. against vaccinating poultry for bird flu, says it could turn ‘flocks into mutation factories’

Old habits die hard, especially when you are Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Health and Human Services Secretary for the Trump administration- known for questioning vaccines- said that vaccinating American poultry stocks against the bird flu virus could turn them into "mutation factories."

"All of my agencies advise against vaccination of birds because if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine, in other words, a vaccine that does not provide sterilizing immunity, that does not absolutely protect against the disease, you turn those flocks into mutation factories," he told Sean Hannity in a Fox News interview.

He alleged that the vaccines are "teaching the organism how to mutate." However, the Department of Agriculture has said that vaccines are crucial to battle the spread of the H5N1 virus that has already claimed the lives of more than 166 million poultry and one Louisiana resident.

The outbreak that began on March 24 has infected a total of 70 humans who were exposed to sick and dead birds or cows. The Trump administration's efforts to combat infections and rising egg prices include producing vaccines. They have allocated $100 million to vaccine research.

The Department of Agriculture also issued a conditional license for a vaccine for chickens in February while a vaccine for cows is currently being developed, the American Society of Microbiology said.

However, Kennedy is less optimistic. "It’s much more likely to jump to animals if you do that," he said.

Stating that "bird flu can never be eradicated," Kennedy claimed that the agency heads at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration have "all said, 'We should not be vaccinating. It's dangerous for human beings to vaccinate birds.'"

Kennedy's proposal to rely on immunity from poultry surviving bird flu infections can pose a greater hazard than vaccination, CBS News reported Daniel Perez, chair in poultry medicine at the University of Georgia, saying.

"This implies a potentially dangerous misunderstanding of how avian influenza works. Allowing highly pathogenic avian influenza to spread through a poultry flock is extremely risky and counterproductive," Perez said.

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