May 13, 2024 – The federal government pays dairy producers hundreds of thousands of dollars to take part in biosecurity efforts as health and agriculture agencies try to higher understand and protect people and animals from bird flu.
An initial allocation of $98 million was announced Friday and could possibly be spent in only 4 months.
The move got here after a employee on a Texas dairy farm tested positive for the virus, officially called avian influenza A (H5N1), earlier this yr. Since then, inactive virus fragments have been detected in pasteurized milk and 42 cattle herds in nine states have tested positive for bird flu. Authorities maintain that the industrial milk supply is secure but admit they need to learn far more about how the virus might affect animals, people and the food supply.
Dairy farmers are reportedly unwilling to voluntarily take part in government efforts to observe cows and staff. The latest plan would offer compensation of as much as $28,000 per site to farmers and people working within the dairy industry for a protracted list of various biosecurity and testing measures, including:
- Monthly payments for private protective equipment or laundry services for staff at sites with affected herds, provided the employees take part in government studies
- Payments for biosecurity planning, comparable to the implementation of in-line sampling devices and measures to guard individuals who continuously move between dairy farms, comparable to feed and milk transporters, and veterinarians
- Promoting heat treatment for milk disposal
- Covering the prices of examining and treating sick or potentially sick animals
The latest measures complement previous testing requirements that apply to some situations involving the transport of cows.
Federal officials said they'd also compensate farmers for milk production losses related to outbreaks and testing under an existing initiative called the Livestock, Honeybee and Farmed Fish Emergency Assistance Program.
“Although dairy cows infected with H5N1 generally recover well and the mortality rate from this disease is low, milk production is dramatically reduced by the disease, resulting in economic losses for producers with affected farms,” says a joint Press release released on Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Additional latest actions by the CDC and FDA will “increase testing and laboratory screening and testing capacities, genomic sequencing, and other interventions to protect the health and safety of dairy products and other potentially affected foods,” the press release said.
The CDC is anticipated to issue a bird flu Wastewater tracking Dashboard this week, several news outlets reported. Some scientists have criticized the CDC for not implementing a tracking program sooner that Los Angeles Times reported.
“CDC is monitoring wastewater data for evidence of unusual flu levels and is working to develop and validate a flu wastewater metric that will soon be made publicly available on the CDC website,” the CDC statement said. Information website on bird flu said his update on Friday.
The FDA and CDC advise people to not devour raw milk. Also on Friday, the FDA announced that it completed tests of 297 samples of dairy products from shops and confirmed preliminary results that no viable type of the virus was detected. The agency said it's conducting additional testing on raw milk samples intended for industrial processing to further assess the effectiveness of pasteurization in inactivating the virus in cow's milk and other dairy products.
“The results of this study will help improve FDA’s understanding of the effectiveness of pasteurization against expected virus concentrations under real-world processing conditions,” the FDA’s latest update said.