Re: 4 more dairy herds in California infected with H5N1.

On 3/9/2025 4:13 PM, RonO wrote:

On 3/9/2025 8:27 AM, RonO wrote:

On 3/8/2025 1:51 PM, RonO wrote:

On 3/7/2025 7:42 PM, RonO wrote:

https://ktla.com/news/california/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-detected-at-4- southern-california-dairy-farms/
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The USDA has not confirmed the infections and they do not say if it is B3.13 or D1.1.  All the herds in California should have been tested over a month ago.  The recent infections are likely due to the denial of worker infections and not restricting dairy worker movements off of infected farms to uninfected farms.  California understood that a lot of Dairy workers were being infected, but they refused to start testing dairy workers after their initial testing found more infected dairy workers than any other state.  They restricted cattle movements, but refused to restrict dairy worker movements.  The result has been that nearly all of their dairies have been infected and after detecting all the infected herds they are still having new infections because they do not have sufficient quarantine rules in place.  They also lost over 40% of their commercial layer flocks because they did not prevent dairy workers from going to poultry farms.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html
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Around half of California's infected dairies have fully recovered (373 out of 749).  There are around 900 herds in California, and new herd infections are still being allowed to happen even after all the herds have started to be routinely tested over a month ago.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.independent.com/2025/03/08/california-poultry-and-dairy- farms-see-drop-in-bird-flu-infections-state-officials-report/
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There was a hearing in California about the Dairy influenza epidemic, and it is pretty damning of the USDA and CDC's and Californias response to the infection.  There are claims that sick workers (could have been infected by the dairy virus) were forced to work with the animals, and that workers were forced to work with sick animals without protective equipment.  The USDA and CDC only recommend that protective equipment be used by dairy workers.  They only recommend that dairy workers not work on other farms if they work on an infected farm.  The voluntary policies have never worked since the start of the infection, and yet nothing ever changed.  California claimed that they were going to start testing dairy workers weeks before the CDC decided to make the same claim, but neither California nor the CDC followed through with their claims that they were going to test all the dairy workers at infected farms.  Infected dairy workers went undetected, and were allowed to go to poultry farms and other dairies.  The result is that nearly over 749 of the 900 dairies in California have been infected and over 40% of their commercial layer flocks have been depopulated along with a bunch of other poultry farms.
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QUOTE:
After Edward Flores of UC Merced described the range of employer responses to dairy worker illnesses, Santa Barbara’s State Senator Monique Limón, who sits on the Senate Health Committee, remarked that it didn’t seem right to have people who were ill taking care of animals. Flores directs the school’s Community and Labor Center, which interviewed dairy workers in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Merced counties. They reported that while some employers supported their workers’ well- being, others ridiculed the need for protective gear or made employees fearful of losing their jobs if they were ill. Nonetheless, dairy workers cared for sick animals, gave them injections, milked sick cows to avoid mastitis — directly exposing themselves to H5N1, which is present in the animals’ mammary glands and milk.
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What is also troubling is that they claim only 144 dairies remain quarantined even though they are claiming only 373 out of 749 dairies are free of infection.  This means that they drop quarantine before the virus has completely cleared infected dairies.  This seems to be tragically stupid because once they drop quarantine cattle movements are no longer restricted (dairy worker movements were never restricted).
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It seems like all the other known infected states California did what they should not have done and failed to do what should have been done. At least they tried to find all their infected dairies.  Only Colorado did that, and likely a lot of infected states never reported the infection.
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Ron Okimoto

 https://www.cbsnews.com/video/the-price-of-milk-immigrants-behind- american-dairy-cbs-reports/
 I do not know how long the link will work.  You have to sit through several commercial breaks to watch the video.  This video is about how illegal immigrants keep food prices low.  It claims that the dairy industry would not survive the loss of the illegal immigrants.  It has already been acknowledged that California agriculture would not be able to harvest vegetable crops without the illegal aliens.  This video indicates that the California dairies were able to exploit the dairy workers and keep them working under conditions not recommended by the CDC and USDA.  The article posted previously indicated that the dairy workers kept working under adverse conditions because they feared for their jobs.  One dairy worker for every 45 cows and a lot of California herds have more than 5,000 cows.  The Wisconsin dairy industry is part of this video.  The claim is that the immigrant farm workers are required by the Wisconsin dairy industry.  One of the workers claimed that if the illegal immigrants were deported that the cows would explode with no one to milk them.
 The video is fairly educational and covers the topic as how the agricultural industry functions and prices are kept economically viable, as well as just how much the industry relies on illegal immigrants.
 Just one more reason why the dairy workers were never tested in order to control the dairy epidemic.
 Ron Okimoto
 

Two more Idaho dairies have shown up on the USDA web site as being confirmed positive for H5N1.  They haven't been revealing the genotype for the last couple weeks, so it isn't known if the last positives in California and Idaho are B3.13 dairy virus or the D1.1 infection found in Nevada and Arizona.  For Idaho these infections are likely part of the second round of farm infections.  Probably all the Idaho herds have been infected with B3.13 already since the state was known to be infected early in the dairy epidemic, but they just stopped reporting positive herds until they were forced to test some herds due to California contact tracing.  It is probably the main reason why the dairy workers were never tested nor restricted from moving from farm to farm even after it was determined that they were spreading the dairy virus to poultry farms and other dairies.
The CBS video is still up on migrant workers, and it is likely one of the reasons for the lack of any real response to the Dairy epidemic from the start in early 2024.  You have to sit through several commercial breaks, but it is an informative story of how the current agricultural system works.  One solution to the problem is to have agricultural visas for migrant farm workers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/the-price-of-milk-immigrants-behind-american-dairy-cbs-reports/
Ron Okimoto