Longtermist shower thought: what if we had a campaign to install Far-UVC in poultry farms? Seems like it could:
Reduce a bunch of diseases in the birds, which is good for: a. the birds’ welfare; b. the workers’ welfare; c. Therefore maybe the farmers’ bottom line?; d. Preventing/suppressing human pandemics (eg avian flu)
Would hopefully drive down the cost curve of Far-UVC
May also generate safety data in chickens, which could be helpful for derisking it for humans
Insofar as one of the main obstacles is humans’ concerns for health effects, this would at least only raise these for a small group of workers.
I think 1 unfortunately ends up not being true in the intensive farming case. Lots of things are spread by close enough contact that even intense uvc wouldn’t do much (and it would be really expensive)
I had a similar thought a (few) year (s) ago and emailed a couple of people to sanity check the idea—all the experts I asked seemed to think this wouldn’t be an effective thing to do (which is why I didn’t do any more work on it). I think Alex’s points are true (mostly the cost part—I think you could get high enough intensity for it to be effective).
Wouldn’t lots of infections even for flu happen through e.g. faeces or such? If the birds are densely packed it might be hard to achieve much with UVC from the ceiling.
Also, about the idea of this being eventually transferable to humans, I wonder if birds have different sensitivity to it (due to being covered in feathers).
Good shower thought! A few people have come to this idea independently for swine CAFOs.
There are a fair number of important “production-limiting diseases” in swine that are primarily spread via respiratory transmission, so this seems to me like a plausible win-win-win (as you’ve described).
This is all very “shower thought” level on my side as well, and I’d be keen for someone to think this through in more depth. Very happy to talk it through with anyone considering a more thorough investigation!
(Note my understanding is influenza is primarily a gastrointestinal illness in poultry, so I don’t think this intervention is as promising in that context.)
Longtermist shower thought: what if we had a campaign to install Far-UVC in poultry farms? Seems like it could:
Reduce a bunch of diseases in the birds, which is good for: a. the birds’ welfare; b. the workers’ welfare; c. Therefore maybe the farmers’ bottom line?; d. Preventing/suppressing human pandemics (eg avian flu)
Would hopefully drive down the cost curve of Far-UVC
May also generate safety data in chickens, which could be helpful for derisking it for humans
Insofar as one of the main obstacles is humans’ concerns for health effects, this would at least only raise these for a small group of workers.
I think 1 unfortunately ends up not being true in the intensive farming case. Lots of things are spread by close enough contact that even intense uvc wouldn’t do much (and it would be really expensive)
I had a similar thought a (few) year (s) ago and emailed a couple of people to sanity check the idea—all the experts I asked seemed to think this wouldn’t be an effective thing to do (which is why I didn’t do any more work on it). I think Alex’s points are true (mostly the cost part—I think you could get high enough intensity for it to be effective).
Wouldn’t lots of infections even for flu happen through e.g. faeces or such? If the birds are densely packed it might be hard to achieve much with UVC from the ceiling.
Also, about the idea of this being eventually transferable to humans, I wonder if birds have different sensitivity to it (due to being covered in feathers).
Good shower thought! A few people have come to this idea independently for swine CAFOs.
There are a fair number of important “production-limiting diseases” in swine that are primarily spread via respiratory transmission, so this seems to me like a plausible win-win-win (as you’ve described).
This is all very “shower thought” level on my side as well, and I’d be keen for someone to think this through in more depth. Very happy to talk it through with anyone considering a more thorough investigation!
(Note my understanding is influenza is primarily a gastrointestinal illness in poultry, so I don’t think this intervention is as promising in that context.)