• Epidemiologic shift: H5N1 has spread globally since 2021, become established in wild birds, and repeatedly spilled into poultry and mammals — fundamentally different from the episodic outbreaks traditional programs were designed to control.
• Controlled suppression framework: A risk-based, sustainable approach that integrates prevention, biosecurity, strategic surveillance, vaccination, rapid response, and business continuity to reduce viral amplification while preserving preparedness for other diseases.
• Vaccination necessity: International standards and WOAH now recognize vaccination as a complementary control tool; an international working group is developing surveillance and certification approaches to allow vaccination and safe trade to coexist.
• Strategic surveillance: Surveillance must shift from finding every infection to answering broader questions about viral activity, production system risk, wildlife circulation, new genotypes, vaccine matching, and zoonotic risk changes.
• One Health requirement: H5N1 spans wildlife, domestic animals, humans, and the environment, demanding collaboration among animal health, wildlife, public health, environmental, agricultural, laboratory, academic, industry and international partners.

In this guest perspective, Joseph F. Annelli, DVM, MS, founder and principal, Practical One Health Solutions, LLC, argues that stamping out H5N1 is no longer enough to control the disease in commercial poultry. The views expressed below are the author's own.

For more than a century, eradication has served as a cornerstone of transboundary animal disease control. When a dangerous disease enters a susceptible livestock population, rapid detection followed by quarantine, movement controls, depopulation, disposal, cleaning and disinfection, surveillance and restoration of disease-free status can be extraordinarily effective. These principles have protected animal agriculture for generations, and they continue to have an essential role in controlling highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

The question is whether they remain sufficient as the overarching long-term strategy for H5N1.

A disease-control strategy built for a different epidemiologic reality

The current H5N1 panzootic is fundamentally different from the episodic incursions around which traditional foreign animal disease programs were designed. Since 2021, H5N1 has spread widely across the world, become established in wild bird populations, repeatedly spilled into poultry and infected numerous mammalian species. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) now says that sustained circulation in wild birds warrants reconsideration of reliance on large-scale culling alone and that more sustainable, long-term strategies are needed, with vaccination potentially serving as an additional control tool.

That should cause us to reconsider the question we are trying to answer.

When infection occurs on a poultry farm, veterinary authorities can eliminate infection from that premise. But when the pathogen remains in migratory wildlife outside the premise, elimination of the flock does not eliminate the ecological source of the next introduction.

Eradicating an outbreak without eradicating the threat

That is not a failure of current HPAI programs. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), state animal health officials, diagnostic laboratories, producers, poultry veterinarians, emergency responders, wildlife professionals and numerous other partners have repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary ability to detect and control outbreaks, building one of the world's most capable veterinary emergency-response systems.

The problem is that we are asking for that system to solve an ecological problem it was never designed to eliminate. Each successful elimination simply resets the clock until the next introduction — a cycle of detection, depopulation, disinfection and repopulation that can represent an operational success without producing strategic success. That is not a criticism of the people implementing the program; it is precisely because the system works so effectively at what it was designed to do that its limitations under a different epidemiologic reality have become increasingly apparent.

From eradication to controlled suppression

I propose that the veterinary and poultry communities begin discussing a framework I refer to as controlled suppression. Controlled suppression does not mean accepting uncontrolled disease. It does not mean abandoning biosecurity, allowing infected animals to move freely, abandoning depopulation or ignoring the zoonotic potential of H5N1.

Controlled suppression is a risk-based, sustainable disease-management framework that integrates prevention, biosecurity, strategic surveillance, vaccination where appropriate, rapid response, movement controls and continuity of business to reduce viral amplification and the long-term consequences of HPAI while preserving national preparedness for other transboundary animal diseases.

Eradication would remain an operational objective when epidemiologically achievable. What changes is the assumption that eradication of every detected domestic outbreak must remain the only organizing principle for long-term national policy. The objective becomes not simply eliminating today's infected flock, but reducing the probability, magnitude, consequences and resource demands of tomorrow's outbreak.

Vaccination must be part of the discussion

Perhaps no issue illustrates the need for reconsideration more clearly than vaccination. For years, the U.S. has been appropriately cautious about routine HPAI vaccination. Concerns include vaccine effectiveness, surveillance of vaccinated populations, the possibility of undetected infection, antigenic evolution, implementation costs and — critically for a major poultry exporter — international trade. Those concerns remain legitimate.

But legitimate concerns are reasons to design vaccination programs carefully, not reasons to remove vaccination indefinitely from the disease-control toolbox.

The international policy environment is already changing. WOAH recognizes vaccination as a complementary HPAI control tool, and in 2026 an international working group — including the U.S., Canada, the European Commission, France, the Netherlands, the U.K. and WOAH — began developing surveillance and certification approaches that could let vaccination and safe trade coexist. Recent WOAH-published economic modeling of the U.S. turkey sector reinforces the case: it suggests vaccination can benefit producers and consumers, though those benefits erode as trade restrictions increase. The lesson is not that vaccination automatically solves HPAI — it is that vaccination policy and trade policy must be considered together.

The policy question should therefore move beyond, 'Should we vaccinate or not vaccinate?' A more useful question is: Under what epidemiologic circumstances, using which vaccines, in which production systems, accompanied by what surveillance, could vaccination reduce disease while protecting trade and public confidence? That is a solvable scientific and policy problem.

Surveillance should change when its purpose changes

A transition toward controlled suppression does not justify abandoning surveillance. It requires making surveillance more strategic.

During an eradication campaign, surveillance is designed heavily around finding infection and demonstrating freedom from disease. In a disease-management environment, surveillance must answer broader questions: Where is viral activity increasing? Which production systems face the greatest risk? What viruses are circulating in wildlife? Are new genotypes emerging? Are vaccines continuing to match circulating viruses? Are breakthrough infections occurring? Is mammalian spillover changing? Is zoonotic risk increasing?

These questions require wildlife surveillance, targeted poultry surveillance, genomic sequencing, event-based detection, vaccine-performance monitoring and integration of animal and public-health information.

Routine testing should not become the objective. Every testing program should periodically be asked a simple question: What decision does this test inform? If testing materially improves animal health, public health, trade assurance, vaccine monitoring or early detection, it has obvious value. If repeated testing of populations in an established epidemiologic situation no longer changes management decisions, resources may be more effectively directed toward higher-value surveillance. That is not an argument for less vigilance. It is an argument for more purposeful vigilance.

We must reconsider the consequences of automatic mass depopulation

Mass depopulation remains necessary in many HPAI outbreaks. Clinically affected birds should not be allowed to suffer, and situations involving intense viral amplification or unacceptable transmission risk may require rapid flock elimination. Nothing in controlled suppression changes that.

But we should be willing to ask whether every infected premises must always produce the same outcome. Vaccination could reduce disease severity and viral amplification. Earlier detection could identify infection before widespread clinical disease. Better epidemiologic assessment could differentiate among levels of transmission risk.

Under carefully defined conditions, those advances may eventually justify evaluation of alternatives for clinically normal birds that can be managed without increasing animal-health or food-safety risk. One possibility deserving research is controlled movement directly to slaughter under quarantine, permit, biosecurity, inspection and regulatory oversight rather than automatic destruction of every bird on every infected premises.

This should not be implemented merely because it is conceptually attractive. It should be investigated. APHIS and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), working with state animal health officials, industry, epidemiologists, food-safety experts and other stakeholders, could determine whether there are circumstances under which such an approach is scientifically defensible. If there are not, the evidence will tell us. If there are, valuable protein might eventually be preserved while maintaining appropriate safeguards.

Animal welfare is part of disease policy

The welfare implications extend beyond clinically ill animals. Mass depopulation of apparently healthy animals has always required ethical justification based on the greater population-health benefit achieved by eliminating infection. That calculation is compelling when depopulation contributes to achievable eradication. It becomes more complicated when repeated introductions from an external reservoir make recurrence likely.

Vaccination, better prevention, strategic surveillance and other interventions could reduce the number of animals that ever reach the point at which emergency depopulation is necessary. That should itself be considered an animal-welfare objective.

There is also a human dimension. Repeated mass depopulation places significant burdens on producers, veterinarians, animal health technicians, responders and others asked to carry out these operations. Veterinary policy should recognize that workforce resilience and responder well-being are part of sustainable disease management.

Trade cannot be allowed to freeze disease policy in place

International trade is perhaps the greatest practical obstacle to a major change in U.S. HPAI policy. The concern is understandable. The U.S. exports poultry meat, eggs, egg products, breeding stock and poultry genetics. A disease-control strategy that protects domestic poultry but unnecessarily sacrifices export markets would create serious economic consequences.

But uncertainty about trade should lead to negotiation — not paralysis.

The international epidemiologic reality has also changed. H5N1 is now maintained and transported over enormous distances by wild and migratory bird populations, so detecting the virus in wildlife within a country's borders should not, by itself, justify broad restrictions on otherwise safe poultry trade — nor should vaccination, when paired with appropriate surveillance and oversight, become a surrogate reason for restricting commerce. International standards already draw this distinction between infection in wildlife and disease status in domestic poultry. The meaningful question for trade is not whether H5N1 has ever been detected somewhere within a country's borders, but whether it is circulating in the domestic poultry population of concern, whether surveillance is adequate to detect that, and whether the specific commodity presents a scientifically meaningful risk.

Absence of detection must also be interpreted in the context of surveillance. Failure to detect H5N1 is not necessarily evidence that the virus is absent. Confidence in disease status depends upon the quality, intensity, representativeness and transparency of surveillance.

International trade policy should consequently continue moving away from indiscriminate country-level restrictions and toward risk-based decisions incorporating surveillance, zoning, compartmentalization, vaccination and vaccine monitoring, commodity characteristics, processing, traceability and official veterinary certification. A virus transported across international boundaries by migratory wildlife cannot reasonably be managed indefinitely through trade policies that assume national political borders correspond to the ecological boundaries of infection.

WOAH has explicitly stated that vaccination, when appropriately implemented and accompanied by surveillance, should not become an unjustified barrier to safe trade. Its current work on HPAI vaccination and trade seeks surveillance approaches capable of providing importing countries with confidence while allowing vaccinated poultry populations to participate in international commerce.

The U.S. should therefore engage its major trading partners before implementing a broad vaccination strategy. APHIS, USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, industry organizations and other relevant parties should present prospective vaccination and surveillance strategies to trading partners and determine what assurances, surveillance, certification, zoning, compartmentalization and commodity-specific safeguards would allow safe trade to continue.

The global poultry industry should not spend the next decade allowing uncertainty about one another's reactions to prevent rational disease-control policy. We should have the conversation.

HPAI is a global problem that requires global certification standards

HPAI H5N1 is not simply an American disease problem. Migratory birds do not recognize national borders, and viral evolution does not stop at ports of entry — disease-management choices made by one country influence production, surveillance, trade and risk elsewhere.

That reality demands precision about what "disease freedom" means. Freedom from HPAI infection in a domestic poultry population is not the same as the complete absence of H5N1 from wildlife within a country's borders, and as the virus continues to circulate in wild birds, that distinction will matter more to credible reporting and rational trade. It does not mean every country should be presumed infected — it means claims of freedom must rest on surveillance appropriate to the circumstances, not on the mere absence of a detection.

Modernizing trade policy in this direction does not mean abandoning animal-health certification — if anything, official veterinary assurance becomes more important as these strategies grow more sophisticated. Certification should continue to speak to disease status, surveillance, origin, vaccination and compliance with importing-country requirements. But for poultry products, risk should be evaluated by commodity, processing and epidemiologic situation rather than by the mere geographic presence of H5N1 in wildlife or by vaccination status alone: vaccination should not become a proxy for infection, and its absence should not become a proxy for safety.

WOAH is already moving in this direction, through its HPAI strategy, vaccination policy, zoning and compartmentalization standards, and ongoing work on vaccination-compatible trade. The next step is an explicit international conversation about what long-term HPAI management and safe poultry trade should look like when a virus is permanently established in wildlife populations that move independently of national borders.

Workforce capacity is a national biosecurity issue

There is another reason to reconsider an indefinitely repeated eradication cycle: people. Veterinary emergency response capacity is finite. The same federal and state veterinarians, epidemiologists, diagnosticians, emergency managers, animal health technicians and laboratory professionals required for prolonged HPAI response are also needed to prepare for other threats.

African swine fever remains a major threat to U.S. swine production. New World screwworm again demands substantial attention in the Americas. Foot-and-mouth disease remains capable of producing an unprecedented agricultural emergency if introduced. The U.S. cannot evaluate HPAI policy as though HPAI were the only disease APHIS Veterinary Services must manage.

Every personnel-intensive response has an opportunity cost. A sustainable HPAI strategy should therefore be judged partly by whether it preserves veterinary capacity for the next emergency. Workforce sustainability is not merely a human-resources issue. It is a component of national biosecurity.

This is fundamentally a One Health problem

H5N1 now occupies the interface among wildlife, domestic animals, humans and the environment. Wild birds maintain and transport viruses. Domestic poultry can amplify them. Mammalian infections demonstrate continued opportunities for host adaptation. Human exposures create public-health concerns. Carcass disposal and outbreak response have environmental consequences. International commerce links disease-control decisions across continents.

No single agency or discipline can manage all these dimensions independently. Controlled suppression therefore requires collaboration among animal health, wildlife, public health, environmental, agricultural, laboratory, academic, industry and international partners. This is not One Health as a slogan. It is One Health as an operating requirement.

A proposed way forward

This editorial intentionally does not attempt to provide the detailed operational specifications for a national controlled-suppression program. Those details matter enormously. Vaccination would require decisions regarding vaccine selection, target populations, administration, monitoring, surveillance, antigenic matching and regulatory oversight. Trade would require bilateral and multilateral negotiations. Surveillance would require redesigned objectives. Any controlled-marketing concept would require rigorous scientific validation and APHIS-FSIS regulatory evaluation. Animal welfare standards would remain essential. Economic consequences would require modeling. Implementation would require substantial industry participation.

These are not reasons to reject the concept. They are the work that follows if the concept is accepted as worthy of serious consideration.

A more detailed framework has been developed outlining one possible pathway, including a national HPAI vaccination advisory mechanism, strategic surveillance, engagement with trading partners, potential pilot programs, workforce considerations, research priorities and staged implementation. But the detailed plan should not precede agreement on the fundamental question: Has H5N1 changed sufficiently that the long-term strategy should change with it?

If the answer from regulators, industry, veterinary organizations, scientists, state animal health officials, trading partners and international authorities is no, then the current strategy should continue and be strengthened. If the answer is yes — or even perhaps — then the next step should be a structured national and international process to evaluate alternatives.

APHIS should not develop that future alone. Industry should not develop it alone. Academia should not develop it alone. And the U.S. cannot develop it independently of its trading partners. The framework must be built collaboratively.

Beginning the conversation

For generations, veterinary medicine has successfully controlled transboundary animal diseases by matching interventions to epidemiology. That principle should guide us now.

The extraordinary work of USDA APHIS Veterinary Services, state animal health officials, poultry veterinarians, producers, diagnostic laboratories, emergency responders and international partners has repeatedly eliminated HPAI from affected domestic poultry premises. Their success should not be diminished.

But success in eliminating individual outbreaks should not prevent us from asking whether the larger strategic objective remains achievable when the pathogen is continually reintroduced from a global wildlife reservoir.

The epidemiology of H5N1 has changed. Our thinking should be allowed to change with it.

Controlled suppression offers one possible framework: retain the strongest elements of traditional disease control while adding vaccination where appropriate, more strategic surveillance, risk-based decision-making, international trade reform, workforce sustainability and genuine One Health integration.

The next step should therefore not be immediate implementation. It should be deliberate engagement among poultry producers, industry organizations, veterinarians, state animal health officials, USDA APHIS, FSIS, public-health and wildlife authorities, academic experts, trading partners and WOAH.

A detailed pathway from eradication toward controlled suppression is available for consideration. What is needed first is agreement that the conversation should begin.

For more than a century, the strength of veterinary public service has rested not merely in its ability to respond to disease, but in its willingness to adapt as science advances. H5N1 presents another such moment. When the biology of disease changes, disease policy must be willing to change with it.

The views expressed are the author's and do not represent official USDA policy.

Joseph F. Annelli, DVM, MS, founder and principal, Practical One Health Solutions, LLC, served more than three decades with USDA APHIS Veterinary Services in roles spanning field operations, epidemiology, emergency management, national and international animal health policy and One Health coordination, including approximately a decade as director of emergency programs. The views expressed are the author's and do not represent official USDA policy.

Selected references

1. World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). HPAI Poultry Vaccination: Moving Beyond Trade Barriers. Published April 20, 2026. https://www.woah.org/en/hpai-poultry-vaccination-moving-beyond-trade-barriers/

2. World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). Avian influenza vaccination: why it should not be a barrier to safe trade. Published December 28, 2023. https://www.woah.org/en/avian-influenza-vaccination-why-it-should-not-be-a-barrier-to-safe-trade/

3. World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (2024–2033): Achieving sustainable, resilient poultry production systems. 2025.

4. World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). How WOAH's new and revised chapters ensure better control of avian influenza. Published May 22, 2026.

5. Shakil GS, Pendell DL, Thompson JM, Marsh TL. The role of vaccination in managing high pathogenicity avian influenza in the turkey market of the U.S. of America. Scientific and Technical Review. 2026;45.