USDA needs to do more to reduce the risk of an avian influenza pandemic in the United States, including ensuring skilled teams are ready to depopulate infected birds should another outbreak occur, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report.
U.S. outbreaks in 2014 and 2016 resulted in the death of more than 50 million chickens, turkeys and other birds and cost billions of dollars. USDA has since completed about 70 percent of 308 corrective actions it identified as needed to resolve problems encountered in those outbreaks.
However, the agency has not evaluated whether those actions have resolved the problems identified, GAO said. It recommended USDA develop a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of its corrective actions.
For example, states were encouraged to form depopulation teams after a lack of skilled personnel available for culling infected poultry led to delays and may have increased the spread of the disease, GAO said.
Other key initiatives support the development of new vaccine manufacturing technologies to reduce reliance on eggs and call for poultry producers to improve biosecurity measures.
The World Health Organization estimates that two strains of the virus have caused more than 2,100 human infections and more than 800 deaths since 1997, primarily in Asia and the Middle East. A spike in fatal human infections in Asia began in late 2016.