As bird flu continues to wreak havoc across the US, killing millions of birds on poultry farms, sending eggs prices soaring, and even popping up in cows and humans, some good news for chickens: A vaccine against the infectious disease is on the horizon just for them. In a Friday statement, animal health company Zoetis announced that the Department of Agriculture had issued it a conditional license for an avian influenza vaccine, an updated version of its existing bird flu vaccine that was approved after "demonstration of safety, purity, and reasonable expectation of efficacy," reports the AP.
Zoetis notes that a conditional license like this is typically issued "to meet an emergency condition, limited market, local situation, or other special circumstance and is issued for a finite period of time," though it can be re-upped if needed. Science reports the tweaked vaccine is being manufactured using a dead version of an H5N2 variant, which Zoetis "has designed to work against circulating variants of the H5N1 virus."
Quartz notes that Zoetis scientists started working on an update for the vaccine they already had in-house once the current outbreak began in early 2022. "Our readiness with this most recent vaccine is another example of how we continue to live our purpose to nurture the world and humankind by advancing care for animals, ultimately providing solutions to global animal health challenges," Mahesh Kumar, senior VP for global biologics R&D at Zoetis, says in the release. USDA regulators must give a final OK to the vaccine before poultry farmers can start administering it. (More H5N1 stories.)
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