Indiana University’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health has received a grant to research ways to combat avian flu.

Associate professor Roberto Rodríguez’s project “Enhancing Poultry Farm Biosecurity Using UVC Light Technology to Prevent Avian Influenza Virus Contamination” received nearly $2 million from the USDA to see if specialized lamps can slow the spread of the bird flu.

Rodríguez said UVC lights can be effective at eliminating viruses while not being able to penetrate and damage human skin.

“We don't have data on how those technologies can be applied in the poultry system,” he said. “So our idea is to look into different fronts on trying to control the virus to enter to the farm through the ventilation system.”

Stopping the virus at a barn’s ventilation system, treating the groundwater, or installing UVC lights directly overhead of the birds are the main implementations of the technology that will be researched.

Rodríguez hopes this research will provide relief to the poultry industries that have been combating bird flu for the past few years.

“There is a lot of economic impact on trying to control the disease because they need to basically kill all the birds and repopulate every time that they have it,” he said.”

Since 2022, nearly 10.5 million chickens, turkeys, and ducks have died from bird flu.