Re: USDA's new plan for avian influenza

On 2/27/2025 1:49 PM, RonO wrote:

On 2/27/2025 1:39 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/usda-rolls-out-5- step-plan-battle-avian-flu-poultry
>
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/02/26/usda- invests-1-billion-combat-avian-flu-and-reduce-egg-prices
>
Their biosecurity efforts do not take into account the transfer of the dairy virus to poultry flocks via dairy workers.  Most of the commercial layer flocks lost since March 2023 have been infected with the dairy virus, and the transmission was not from wild birds.  Their 83% transmission from wild birds is misleading because the open air duck and turkey farms along with birds exposed to outdoors like free range or backyard poultry represent the majority of poultry infections, but these flocks are much smaller than commercial layer flocks.  The USDA's own work in June 2024 claimed that 2 dairy workers from infected farms worked on two of the commercial layer farms that became infected with the dairy virus.  They ignore how most of the birds have been infected and their plan is likely going to fail.
>
They need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that dairy workers from those farms to not work on commercial poultry farms.  You can change clothes, take showers, and an infected worker will still transmit the virus to the birds.  They understood that dairy workers were infecting the first commercial layer flocks in Texas and Michigan because both states determined that dairy workers often work at more than one dairy, and 7% of them in both states also work on commercial poultry farms.
>
The USDA has ignored their own findings long enough, and the denial has to end in order to keep the commercial flocks from being infected. California understood that dairy workers were spreading the infection because contact tracing was identifying so many infected herds, but California refused to test dairy workers for infection, and limit the dairy workers from working on other farms.  California limted cattle movement, but would not restrict dairy worker movements.  The result was that nearly all the dairy herds in California were infected and they lost over 40% of their commercial layer flocks to the dairy virus.
>
With results like that it goes beyond incompetence for the USDA to not account for how the flocks are being infected in their plan.
>
Ron Okimoto
>

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/2-pet-cats- washington-state-get-avian-flu-3-more-detections-cattle
 More cats infected by raw pet food.
 2 more Nevada dairies and 1 California dairy have been found to be positive.  There can't be that many dairies in Nevada (9 likely infected with D1.1)  If they do not limit dairy worker movements in Nevada, all of their dairies are likely to be infected like California.  It is the more lethal D1.1 genotype in Nevada, and there is no excuse for not testing the dairy workers and getting them treated as quickly as possible.  They already know that 1 Nevada dairy worker has been infected by the cattle.  Many more are likely infected and if they work on more than one dairy farm they are spreading the infection.  We even know that we have to worry about veterinarians being infected and possibly spreading the virus to other farms.
 Ron Okimoto
 

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7406a5.htm?s_cid=mm7406a5_w#suggestedcitation
I do not know why the CDC has bothered to publish this study.  They never published a similar study for Florida that would have likely had very different conclusions.  In this study they want to blame wild birds for the H5 virus found in waste water.  They note that other states with positive waste water had infected dairy herds and poultry flocks, but only People and wild birds are contributing to the positive waste water in Oregon.  They are hoping that more than the single known Oregon human infection do not exist to be contributing virus to the waste water.
They never made such a report for Florida that had positive dairy products, and dairy virus positive poultry flocks with positive waste water samples.  The CDC never responded to their own Florida results. The likely conclusion would have been that dairies were contributing to the waste water virus positive samples, but the dairies were never tested even after milk products produced in Florida came up positive for the dairy virus.  This was so early in the dairy virus infection that every dairy herd in Florida could have been infected and recovered by now (The FDA detected the positive dairy products in May 2024).
California claims that 329 of their 748 infected herds have recovered.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html
Ron Okimoto