Bird flu vaccine conditionally approved for use in chickens

An effort to fight rising egg prices and turn the tide of bird flu

Zoetis recently announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Center for Veterinary Biologics (CVB) has issued the company a conditional license for its Avian Influenza Vaccine, H5N2 Subtype. It is a killed virus vaccine that is approved for use in chickens. H5N2 is similar to H5N1 subtype, but there are less cases of H5N2 in humans. According to Zoetis, “the conditional license was granted on the demonstration of safety, purity, and reasonable expectation of efficacy based on serology data.”

More than 150 million birds in the U.S. have been affected with bird flu since February 2022, including in backyard and commercial flocks. A conditional license in this situation is similar to what the FDA uses for emergency use authorization in the past. Conditional licenses may be renewed at the discretion of the CVB.

When a new bird flu strain was identified in the United States in early 2022, Zoetis started working on updating their previous bird flu vaccine. They initially worked on a vaccine for chickens in 2001-2002 to combat bird flu in Southeast Asia.

In 2016, Zoetis received a conditional license for its H5N1 vaccine and a contract award for the USDA’s National Veterinary Stockpile; this same vaccine was first used by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2023 to help protect California condors.

I am hopeful that interventions such as this one will help combat the crisis unfolding in our avian population that has caused a spike in egg prices. The USDA predicts that egg prices will rise by 20% in 2025 compared to 2.2% overall for food prices.

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