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View ProfilesPublished July 3, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
State health officials are urging Vermont dairy farmers to stay vigilant as a highly contagious avian flu tears through herds of cattle in the Midwest.
A new strain of the virus, H5N1, was detected in cows for the first time in late March, and outbreaks have since been confirmed in 136 dairy herds across a dozen states, mostly west of the Mississippi River.
The disease is disruptive: Though cows typically recover, the virus can make them sick and decrease their production. Farmers have been encouraged to dump any milk from infected cows, a blow to those with tight margins. And the virus can spread to humans, putting dairy workers at risk.
The Northeast appears to have been spared so far, with the closest cases in Ohio. But Vermont farmers and health officials are closely monitoring the situation, since the longer outbreaks last, the more likely the virus will reach the state's border.
"At that point, it's just a matter of time before it gets to us," said Jackie Folsom, president of Vermont Farm Bureau, a nonprofit advocacy group.
First discovered in China in the 1990s, H5N1 has long circulated in migratory birds. A new strain that emerged a few years ago has whipped around the globe, leaving destruction in its path. It has wiped out domestic poultry flocks and spilled over to other species, causing huge die-offs among marine mammals such as elephant seals. In Vermont, lab tests have confirmed infections this year in two red-tailed hawks and a bobcat.
The threat to the public remains low for now. Health officials are warning against drinking raw milk but say people can safely consume pasteurized milk and cooked beef. So far, there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
Three dairy workers in Texas and Michigan tested positive this spring; all caught the illness from infected cows. They've only had mild symptoms — good news given that the virus has historically had a high fatality rate among humans, killing roughly half of the 900 or so people infected over the past several decades.
Still, the outbreak has public health experts worried. The longer H5N1 spreads, the more chances it has to mutate into a more transmissible form. Under that still-speculative scenario, dairy cow outbreaks could fuel the next pandemic.
"We still don't know a lot," said Natalie Kwit, a trained epidemiologist who serves as Vermont's public health veterinarian. "We're looking to our federal agencies and the other states that are dealing with it for guidance."
Among the unknowns is whether the virus might be spreading silently. New research suggests that it probably jumped from an infected bird to a cow sometime around the start of the year — months before the first confirmed bovine case. In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered farmers to begin testing their lactating cows any time they are shipped across state lines.
Yet public health experts warn that the U.S. won't know the full extent of outbreaks until it adopts a more aggressive, systematic testing regimen. Some are comparing it to the early days of COVID-19, when a sluggish response allowed the virus to spread undetected.
"We're flying blind," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told NPR last month.
Vermont has conducted about 100 tests on 13 farms; all were negative. Most were administered under the federal travel rules, though a few involved cows that appeared to be sick, according to Kristin Haas, the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets' state veterinarian.
Vermont otherwise has no new protocols for its roughly 500 dairy farms, which, as of 2022, were home to about 117,500 cows. Instead, farmers are urged to keep up their "biosecurity practices," a set of on-farm actions Haas described as setting up an imaginary wall around a group of animals to prevent them from getting sick. New research suggests the virus is spreading through infected milk rather than air droplets, and experts believe the ongoing outbreaks are mainly the result of contaminated milking machines being shared across farms.
Common biosecurity measures include quarantining newly arriving cows and changing clothes when moving between herds.
The USDA has recommended that farms discourage visitors and equip workers with personal protective equipment such as gowns, goggles, gloves and masks. But with no cases reported in Vermont, farmers are weighing whether it's worth wearing PPE during the summertime heat. "There's a threading of the wire as to what's practical, based on the risk index," Haas said.
Summer adds another wrinkle. Vermont has about a dozen fairs and field days, at which cows from all over the state and beyond converge into single locations where tens of thousands of people want to see them up close.
Some states, including New York, are requiring that farmers test any lactating cows they're bringing to county fairs. Vermont hasn't taken that step yet, though anyone bringing a cow here from nearby states would need to test under the federal rules. Vermont farmers are encouraged to take precautions, such as limiting their use of communal milking parlors. The message to fairgoers, meanwhile: Wash your hands, and don't eat around the animals.
"It's not really a new message, just a new risk," said Kwit, the health department vet.
Dozens of farmers attended an informational meeting about the virus hosted by the Agency of Agriculture last month. Among them was Earl Ransom, whose family runs a 144-head dairy operation in Strafford known as Rockbottom Farm.
After learning more about the outbreaks in other parts of the country, Ransom feels pretty confident in his farm's preventive measures. It's been years since he's bought a new cow, he said, and he generally doesn't allow people to have close contact with his animals because of the risk of disease. When the farm does have visitors — a school tour, perhaps — they wear disposable booties and avoid areas where the cows eat.
One thing he's not so sure about: whether to bring his cows to the Tunbridge World's Fair this September. His eldest son wants to go, and his vet has said it's probably safe, as long as they follow the state's guidance. But Ransom said his inclination is to keep the cows home until there's more clarity on the virus.
If the region avoids any cases over the next month, he might consider it, he said: "But if it flares up in this area, then definitely not."
Workers from the state ag agency and health department have been meeting regularly to discuss their respective roles should the state confirm its first case. Affected farms would be issued a quarantine notice, officials say, and the state would start contact tracing to figure out how the virus infiltrated the farm and whether workers might have been exposed.
While the departments have some experience with that process due to several small, backyard domestic poultry outbreaks, dairy farms could pose additional challenges. Many farmworkers don't speak English, for instance. The health department says it is prepared to tailor its outreach as needed, drawing on lessons learned during COVID-19. Both departments have also created informational pages on their websites about the bird flu.
The state vets say they're holding out hope that national containment efforts will stop the virus in its tracks. Federal agriculture leaders are "not at a stage where they're saying, 'OK, this is just the new normal,' and we live with it," Haas said.
"I don't know what level of confidence I have in this statement, but it is technically possible that we don't see cases in Vermont," she said.
Farmers are still anxious — and understandably so, said Folsom, the farm bureau president. "There's so much up in the air, and nobody really knows what's going on," she said.
And, just like weather patterns, there's only so much farmers themselves can control. "Other than watching bulletins come out and seeing how close it's getting, we're all just in a wait-and-see mode," Folsom said.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Bird Flu Blues | Vermont health officials prepare for a virus that is spreading in dairy herds"
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