The ongoing spread of the highly pathogenic bird flu worldwide is reaching an “unprecedented” scale, a United Nations agency warned Monday.
Speaking at a conference in Rome, key members of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) met to discuss the global outbreak of avian influenza.
They warned that the virus’s ability to spread to other mammals means countries need to act fast to strengthen biosecurity and improve surveillance.
“The world currently faces an unprecedented global pathogenic avian influenza…. The virus has changed and once again we need efforts to control it,” said the FAO’s director of cabinet, Godfrey Magwenzi.
He warned that the crisis threatens to have “serious impacts on food security and food supply in countries, including loss of valuable nutrition, rural jobs and income, shocks to local economies and of course increasing costs to consumers.”
Once limited to a few continents, avian flu has spread across all five continents since 2021, affecting more than 528 species, the FAO warned.
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The virus is now present in 124 countries, causing the deaths of 47 million wild birds, while more than 600 million domestic birds have been culled or disposed of in efforts to control the outbreak, the agency added.
Although bird flu usually does not infect humans, rare cases do happen. From 2003 to 2024, the World Health Organization has reported 954 human bird flu cases, including 464 deaths.
One of the most recent cases involved the first reported United States bird flu death. The person, from Louisiana, was hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms after contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock and later died in January.
“Highly pathogenic avian influenza is both an urgent but also a growing threat,” said the FAO’s deputy director general, Beth Bechdol.
“And it’s clearly one of the highest priority, in this moment, transboundary crisis that demands a well-coordinated global response, while still also encouraging national governments to amplify their own efforts to take the appropriate protections and mitigation actions as well,” she said during the conference.
She added that the growing threat of avian influenza has a devastating impact on farmers, food security and national economies — and ultimately, consumers.
For example, the bird flu outbreak has forced farmers to cull millions of chickens and domestic birds, creating egg shortages and driving up prices, specifically in the U.S.
Canada’s egg prices have stayed relatively stable, even with bird flu affecting poultry farms. But experts have previously warned that there’s still no guarantee egg prices won’t go up in Canada.
While bird flu continues to impact farmers and consumers, Bechdol warned it’s more than just an “agricultural crisis.”
“The uncontrolled spread of avian influenza and another zoonotic disease pose serious risks to global health, to human health … just as we have seen with Ebola and other human pandemics,” she said.
Although the current risk to the general public remains low, experts have warned that each time the virus jumps to a new species, it has more chances to mutate and evolve, increasing the potential to infect humans.
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