We’ve honestly lost count of how many outrageous, misleading, and outright dumb things Elon Musk has tweeted this year. His own AI considers him one of the biggest sources of disinformation. This time, the billionaire chainsawer has set his eyes on chicken.
Musk claimed the Biden administration ordered “an insane slaughter of 150 million egg-laying chickens.” But here’s the thing: not only does that have nothing to do with Biden, it’s what the vast majority of scientists recommend in this context.
The ultimate disinformation machine
“Whenever I see a tweet by [Musk] on any topic I know something about, he’s totally, utterly wrong,” writes Dr. Francois Balloux the director of the University College London Genetics Institute, on X. “Elon Musk has just become the ultimate outrage disinformation machine.”
Culling chicken is a grim approach, but it’s considered essential to halt the rapid spread of avian flu.
Balloux went on to explain that the H5N1 bird flu has a mortality rate close to 100% in chicken. When the virus shows up on a farm, it’s a death sentence and all animals are euthanised to reduce their suffering and limit the risk of spread to other animals and humans. The virus is already endemic in cows and has jumped to cats and even humans.
“Culling all the chicken in a farm where H5N1 is circulating is the correct response, epidemiologically, ethically and morally, and it is standard procedure globally,” Ballout explained on X, adding further context. “Over 10 billion chickens are being killed each year in the US generally far less humanely than the 150M that got euthanised because of H5N2 exposure.”
Granted, the virus isn’t just passed on by chicken, it’s also passed by wild birds. But the goal for now isn’t to wipe out the virus, it’s just to limit the damage and reduce the risk of the disease spreading to other flocks and to humans.
So what is Musk’s alternative?
Rather unsurprisingly, Musk hasn’t offered an alternative. Maybe Kevin Hassett—Trump’s top economic adviser—has a plan. A couple of weeks ago, he also criticized Biden’s approach by saying “Biden plan was to just, you know, kill chickens, and they spent billions of dollars just randomly killing chickens within a perimeter where they found a sick chicken.”
So what’s the new plan? Well… Hassett also hasn’t explained anything. The most he’s said about it is “better ways with biosecurity, and medication, and so on.” So on, what?
Rosemary Sifford, the USDA’s chief veterinary officer, recently confirmed there are “no anticipated changes to our current stamping-out policy at this time.” So we have no idea what the new administration actually wants to do.
There are influenza vaccines (though this administration seems to be very much against vaccines), but they’re not practical nor recommended for widespread use. For starters, you’d need billions and billions of vaccines considering the sheer number of chickens we consume. The other approach is to vaccinate post-infection, which can reduce mortality and clinical signs of disease, but this is not recommended practice.
“Vaccinated birds can still become infected, shed virus, and transmit the virus to other vaccinated or unvaccinated birds, mammals and humans,” the UK government explained in a recent publication. This could strongly backfire and practically lead us towards a new pandemic.
“As such, vaccination of birds may mask infection by increasing the time taken to detect and respond to detection of the virus. If appropriate surveillance is not put in place, this could result in a vaccinated flock being infected without detection as well as potentially creating a false sense of security, resulting in a possible relaxation of biosecurity and vigilance, further undermining the combined effectiveness of all measures to control the disease.”
Reckless approaches put the entire world at risk
This reckless approach endangers everyone. Even before the country was, as some say, “Musk-ified,” America’s reaction to avian flu alarmed global health experts. The concern isn’t just about rising egg prices—it’s the possibility of a virus that mutates and leaps from human to human, echoing the chaos of COVID-19. Scientists warn that reliable, proven measures like responsibly culling infected flocks might contain the threat.
But confusion and mixed signals undermine these measures. The only tangible steps this administration has taken regarding avian flu was to fire experts and then try to hire them back. Public trust erodes when authorities appear disorganized, and Musk’s DOGE has sown chaos and disorganization in the federal system meant to work on avian flu. Misleading claims from political figures and high-profile personalities on X that entire flocks are slaughtered for no good reason are obviously not helping the case.
As dire as it sounds, USDA officials say culling exposed poultry is still the most effective way to keep a bad situation from exploding into something worse. We need more science-based surveillance and informed action, not more misinformation that overshadows the facts and hampers disease control.
