Three of America’s top milk-producing states aren’t a part of federal surveillance testing for bird flu even as a new variant is turning up in dairy cattle, in what some public health experts say is a troubling gap in the national effort to identify and detect the spread of the virus.
The U.S. Agriculture Department started a voluntary milk-testing program in December after the virus was found to have jumped to cattle in March. The recent outbreak of avian influenza in the United States was first detected in 2022, but has picked up steam over the last year, decimating poultry farms nationwide, killing tens of millions of birds and driving up the price of eggs.
While the risk to humans remains low, many public and animal health experts argue that broad, nationwide testing of milk is critical to containing virus cases that might otherwise go undetected, giving the variants more opportunities to spread to animals — and to humans.
Texas, Wisconsin and Idaho, three of the country’s top five milk-producing states, aren’t participating in the voluntary federal testing program. And though efforts are underway to get them on board, it’s not clear when they will join or how long it will take.
Texas had the first known case of bird flu in cattle, the first person believed to be infected by a mammal, and a case in dairy cattle as recently as December. But the state’s agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, said surveillance milk testing was unnecessary, since there are currently no active cases of bird flu in the state’s commercial cattle or poultry.
Wisconsin said it “continues to work toward” enrolling in the USDA’s testing program and is working closely with state and federal partners to monitor bird flu developments, according to a spokesperson for the state agriculture department.
Idaho did not respond to requests for comment but is not currently participating in the program, according to the USDA.
Posted by John3262005