U.S. health and agriculture officials on Friday pledged new spending and other efforts to help track and contain an outbreak of bird flu in the nation’s dairy cows that has spread to more than 40 herds in nine states.
The new funds include $101 million to continue work to prevent, test, trace and treat animals and humans potentially affected by the virus known as H5N1 type A, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. And they include up to $28,000 each to help individual farms test livestock and bolster biosecurity efforts to slow the spread of the virus, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Additionally, dairy farmers will be compensated for the loss of milk production from infected cattle, whose supply drops sharply when they fall ill, officials said. And dairy farmers and farmworkers would be paid to participate in a workplace study conducted by the USDA and CDC.
Until now, farmers have been reluctant to allow health authorities onto their farms to test livestock due to uncertainty about how it would affect their businesses, researchers said. Additionally, agricultural workers, including many migrant workers, have been reluctant to get tested for fear of missing work or because they do not want to be monitored by the government.
The incentives should help increase farmers’ willingness to test their livestock, said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, which has been monitoring the outbreak.
“This gives you the latitude and the ability to start moving in the right direction,” he said.
The new spending comes more than six weeks after the first detection of a bird flu virus in dairy cattle — and a confirmed infection in a Texas dairy worker exposed to infected cows that developed a mild eye infection and later recovered. About 30 people have been tested, with negative results, and another 220 are being monitored, according to the CDC.
As of Friday, 42 herds in nine states have confirmed dairy cow infections. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the outbreak has not spread more widely.
“It’s still in the same nine states and that’s the most positive thing about where we are,” he told reporters.
Remnants of the virus were found in samples of supermarket dairy products, but tests by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that pasteurization, or heat treatment, killed the virus. The USDA found no evidence of the virus in a small sample of retail ground beef.
“The risk to the public from this outbreak remains low,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
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