The current approach is, when a chicken in a chicken flock shows itself to be infected with the avian flu, kill the entire flock. That’s hard on a chicken farmer’s pocket book, since the government only reimburses the farmer for part of the cost of his loss (whether the government should reimburse the farmer for 100% or 0% of his loss is a separate question).

A current alternative is to vaccinate the chickens in the flock against the avian flu, but that’s a labor (and cost) intensive effort since the vaccine must be delivered by injection under the skin, chicken by chicken. Vaccines are under development that would allow mass vaccination, but those are a ways away.

There’s an alternative approach that isn’t, as far as I can tell, being looked into. I sympathize with one of the motives for the mass killing of entire flocks—no one wants to let the chickens die miserable deaths one by each. However, if the avian flu is allowed to run its course through the flock, 90% to 100% of infected birds die. That means that some number of those chickens survive their infection.

How about letting the avian flu run its course through some number of flocks and collecting up the survivors? Those chickens have shown themselves to be resistant to the avian flu. These should be bred among themselves to see if an avian flu-resistant population of chickens could be bred.

Or not, but it seems worth the try.