Re: USDA announces a new Dairy Influenza testing strategy

On 12/7/2024 5:52 PM, RonO wrote:

On 12/7/2024 5:42 PM, RonO wrote:

On 12/7/2024 12:42 PM, erik simpson wrote:

On 12/7/24 10:34 AM, RonO wrote:

On 12/7/2024 11:40 AM, erik simpson wrote:

On 12/7/24 8:53 AM, RonO wrote:

On 12/6/2024 1:22 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2024/12/06/usda- announces- new- federal-order-begins-national-milk-testing
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The USDA is finally going to do what needed to be done at the beginning of the dairy influenza epidemic.  They are still calling it avian influenza when it has been primarily a dairy infection since March. Things have just gotten to the point where stupidity and politics can't stop them from doing the right thing any longer.
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They are going to start a national milk testing program that will force the states with infected herds to admit that they have infected herds and start them doing something about it.  They need to protect dairy workers and poultry flocks from getting infected by the dairy virus.
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The CDC's own research in late October indicated that the dairy H5N1 genotype B3.13 could survive the most common pasteurization method and remain infective for at least 4 days in refrigerated whole milk. The FDA went into denial, but claimed to start another milk testing program, but implemented the wrong testing protocol to determine if there was an issue with the milk supply.  Instead of going to plants accepting contaminated milk and testing the raw milk before pasteurization and then after pasteurization in order to determine what went in and what came out they asked for volunteer production facilities and volunteer dairies that wanted their milk tested. This was obviously stupid, but they did it, and never have announced any results from the program. They haven't even claimed that they got enough volunteers to do an effective study.  They probably needed to test up to a hundred plants handling infected milk, using various procedures to pasteurize their milk, and they needed to test them multiple times during the days production, and on multiple different days of the week.  They needed to determine if there was any stage of production that could be compromized and let infective milk enter the food supply during stages like shift changes, maintenance, cleaning, and restart.
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The Missouri patient and the child that got infected by the dairy virus in California are possible cases of infection due to ingestion of dairy products.  The CDC claims that they do not know how the patients were infected, but their only contact with dairy cattle was the milk that they drank.  The milk supply might be 99% safe, but it is that 1% that could have been an issue in California and Missouri.
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It will be important to know if infective virus is surviving in the milk supply if the virus does mutate to better infect humans, but the FDA is not doing what they should be doing.  Why would any regulatory agency rely on volunteers when the ones that will not volunteer are the most likely to have the issues that they are looking for?
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Ron Okimoto

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https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/business/health-care/ article296704124.html
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This Washington State news paper is asking why Washington with 11 infected poultry workers was left off the list for starting bulk milk tank testing.  They aren't the only affected left off the initial list. a month ago the USDA claimed that they were going to initiate bulk milk tank testing in states with known infected herds within 30 days, but that may not have happened. There have been no updates on that project. I think that they announced that project around Nov. 7.
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The USDA just announced a national program and are planning to start with Oregon, California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania.  Colorado has already done several rounds of bulk milk tank testing of their dairies since they were infected and identified the second most number of infected dairies, but are way behind California in the number of infected herds, mainly because it looks like they contained the infection by identifying their infected herds. Oregon, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania have not yet adimitted to having infected herds.  So why has the USDA left out Missouri and Washington that have had infected human patients?
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What happened to the program that was supposed to have started by now in the states with known infected herds?  What will happen with this current program?  Those are the questions that the USDA should be answering.
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Ron Okimoto

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It's good see USDA taking an interest in these infections. The CDC seemed like they weren't paying much attention to the infected birds, cattle, etc.
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Both the CDC and USDA have been pretending that the dairy epidemic would just go away if they pretended hard enough, but reality is catching up with them.  The CDC already announced a program to start testing dairy workers a couple weeks ago, but nothing has come of it. Nothing came of the USDA's first announcement that they were going to start testing dairies in states with known infections from a month ago.  That attempt may have failed to get started, so they are claiming that they are going to start this effort.  It has been a fiasco for both the CDC and the USDA from the start in March.
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Ron Okimoto
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Ever get the feeling that our government actually doesn't work?
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https://apnews.com/article/bird-flu-dairy-workers- h5n1-20d6a20ea9e1047ad7a92f9da31709f8
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This is an AP news report on the CDC claiming that they were going to start testing dairy workers back in Nov. 7, but nothing seems to have happened.  The CDC's initial plan was to "monitor" the situation and wait for the virus to make the jump to infecting humans.  They claimed that they could detect human infections rapidly enough to jump in and contain the infection when it happened.  They haven't even been able to identify more infected workers in the last 30 days.  With responses like that the next world wide pandemic is pretty much assured to happen if the virus ever does mutate to infecting humans and becomes a respiratory infection.  They know where the dairy workers are getting infected, and they can't get testing implemented to identify the infected.  How did they expect to identify the infected so that they could contain the virus running through the area around the dairies?
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https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/agency-announcements/usda-builds- actions-protect-livestock-public-health-h5n1-avian-influenza
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This is the press release where the USDA claimed that they were going to start testing infected states Oct 30th.  It seems nuts that nothing came of this, and now we have a new national goal that will take how long to implement?
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Ron Okimoto

 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/usda-issues-order-raw-milk-samples- nationwide-tested/story?id=116531943
 Any dairy herds that test positive are required to provide information that would allow contact tracing in order to track the infection.
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Herd owners with cattle that test positive for bird flu have to provide information that allows health officials to perform contact tracing and disease surveillance. Private laboratories and state veterinarians must now report positive bird flu test results to the USDA.
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 This means that every state will have to do what California did in finding their infected herds by contact tracing.  This is something that the CDC never implemented.  They didn't even try to start contact tracing.
 Ron Okimoto

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The USDA seems to be optimistic that testing all the dairies may be a means of containing the infection because of the Colorado results. Colorado implemented testing all their dairies.  There were only around 120 dairies in the state.  They found over half of the dairies to be infected, but were able to limit further infections by isolating the infected herds.  I do not know what isolation methods were employed. They would have had to stop people and equipment from going to uninfected farms.  There was already a prohibition of cattle between farms.  It may have been easier to isolate the herds.  Over 70% of infected herds were in one County.
Contact tracing and finding out what other farms the dairy workers are working at can likely decrease the spread if the movements of the dairy workers can be limited to between already infected farms.  Preventing dairy workers from infected farms from working on Poultry farms should stop the spread from dairy to poultry.
Ron Okimoto