Feds to spend millions to contain bird flu outbreak amid testing lag
Federal officials are scrambling to track the virus. But they’ve struggled to gain access to farms to collect data.
The federal government will spend millions to stem the spread of avian influenza in the nation’s dairy herds to keep the virus from mutating and spreading among humans, officials said Friday.
The investment comes after the federal government drew fire from public health experts for not testing enough cattle or workers exposed to infected herds, which they worry endangers the ability of the U.S. to rapidly respond if the virus mutates. Under the new plan, the government will compensate impacted farmers for costs associated with the virus and juice efforts to track and trace the virus.
“Our mission is to contain this as an animal health event,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters Friday afternoon. “Ultimately, we want to eliminate the virus in the industry and develop over time a vaccine to prevent another emergence of H5N1 in cattle,” he added.
The virus is currently circulating within poultry flocks and dairy cattle, but the virus’ recent jump to dairy cows has alarmed experts who fear it could more easily infect humans the longer it spreads among animals.
Federal officials have been scrambling to track and trace the bird flu outbreak that was first detected in dairy cows in Texas in March, with one confirmed human case in a Texas dairy worker. But they’ve struggled to access farms to collect data, due to pushback from state agriculture officials and farmers. Just this week, USDA announced four additional dairy herds in Michigan and one in Colorado have tested positive for avian influenza, raising the total to 42 herds in nine states.
The Agriculture Department plans to provide farmers with disaster assistance for the loss of milk production as well as new costs associated with additional testing. It will also pay farmers to develop biosecurity plans on their farms and safely dispose of contaminated milk over the next 120 days, with a maximum value of $28,000 per farm.
Public health officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan to spend millions to boost testing and tracing efforts among workers and others exposed to the virus.
Vilsack’s remarks Friday come after state agriculture officials expressed rising concerns that the White House and CDC’s lead in coordinating the federal government’s bird flu response is at times sidelining USDA officials focused on stopping the spread of the disease among animals.
Vilsack said that USDA plans to be a “supportive partner” with the FDA and the CDC, encouraging producers to follow worker safety and biosecurity guidelines, and helping to bridge what some agriculture officials have called a trust gap between federal officials and farmers. He stressed that any actions taken by farmers will be “voluntary.”
Background
The current bird flu outbreak, which stretches back to 2022, has killed or forced the culling of millions of birds in backyard flocks and commercial poultry and egg facilities but the virus is not fatal in cattle. Though the Biden administration announced new testing requirements for lactating cattle intended to slow the spread, public health experts have said the move was inadequate and that the federal government has been too slow to release new data about the virus. Since the start of the outbreak, USDA says it has conducted more than 7,500 tests. Under the federal order, officials are seeing roughly 80 more tests per day.
“Obviously it’s taken a while for folks to basically understand the federal order,” Vilsack said.
Public health experts have also pressed the Biden administration to roll out financial incentives in line with those announced Friday as a way to get buy-in from farmers and quickly stop the spread of the disease.
Rick Bright, who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in an interview this month that the federal government should be working to create incentives for farms to be transparent with health officials.
“The challenge we’re already facing is going to get worse with this barrier between federal and state and local and farms,” Bright said. “Without the right incentives to take care of the farmers, and the workers on the farms and in the factories processing milk, we’re actually incentivizing this opaqueness.”
HHS also said it is investing $101 million through CDC and FDA efforts to test, prevent and treat avian flu, according to Friday’s announcement. Officials plan to scale up their work monitoring people who have been exposed to infected animals and expand wastewater tracking and contact tracing. Some of the money will also go toward genomic sequencing to help track changes in the virus as well as making sure that human vaccine candidates would be effective or to develop new ones if necessary.
The FDA will also expand its tests of the commercial milk supply and monitor the efficacy of pasteurization. HHS also said it will make personal protective equipment available to states from the Strategic National Stockpile as needed, though a recent Government Accountability Office report was critical of the department’s handling of the stockpile during prior public health crises, including Covid-19 and mpox.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf hinted to reporters on Wednesday that the Biden administration plans to ask Congress for supplemental funds to respond to avian influenza.
“I would just say that we’re looking at all of our expenses,” Califf said. “If I was in business, I would be raising money.”
Funding
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), the top Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing USDA and FDA, said in an interview that he’s discussed the matter with Califf, but the administration hasn’t told lawmakers how much money it is considering requesting.
Hoeven said he’d have to see any final request before assessing whether such a funding package could clear Congress at this time, given ongoing fights over spending. But he said the federal government needed to step up its response in the meantime to avoid similar mistakes it made in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We want to be very careful here. Any time you see disease migrating from animals to humans, we’ve got to stay ahead of that,” Hoeven said. “We need to be proactive. We can’t go through the kind of shutdown stuff we had with coronavirus.”
Human risk
The CDC has published guidelines for people working closely with infected animals and this week urged states to facilitate the distribution of protective gear like aprons, gloves and goggles. Still, public health experts and farmworker advocates fear that workers, who are likely the first line of defense to prevent the spread of the virus among humans, are not adequately protected.
Officials at the FDA and the Agriculture Department have already conducted tests of retail milk and retail ground beef. Early results indicated that while viral particles were found in nearly 20 percent of the milk supply, pasteurization effectively neutralized the avian flu virus. Officials did not find viral particles in retail ground beef samples taken from states where a bird flu outbreak has been detected in dairy herds. Still, the FDA’s milk tests indicated the virus may be much more widespread in dairy herds than officials initially believed.
Still, the USDA’s and other agencies’ limited authorities are shaping the federal government’s response. Vilsack said that the USDA can’t mandate farmers test for bird flu unless the animals are being transported across state lines; it can only set limits on any cattle movement. Any testing requirements within states must be set by the state officials, he explained. But, he added, USDA is encouraging states to consider additional restrictions on the movement of sick cows.
“This is a state call,” Vilsack said. “And to the extent that we can restrict as much movement as possible, we think that’s a good idea.”
Chelsea Cirruzzo contributed to this report.