NC Last week at the state fairs, Steve Troxler (left), commissioner of agriculture for the state, and Robert Califf (middle), commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, talked about deeply harmful avian flu. Right there is Eric Deeble, who is an undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rose Hoban | Health News for North Carolina
In April, North Carolina’s agricultural leaders got a bad surprise. One of the state’s dairy herds had cows that tested positive for a strain of avian flu that has been showing up in farms across the US since the spring.
During a recent panel talk led by N.C. Agricultural Commissioner Steve Troxler, 150 farmers, county and state agricultural officials, and federal regulators heard from state veterinarian Mike Martin about how North Carolina found out about the information.
Martin said that his office knew that cows from the Texas panhandle, which is where the outbreak was first found, had been brought to North Carolina. The cows had been tested for the virus as part of routine procedures, not because they showed signs.
Martin told the group at the Raleigh state fairgrounds, “We had already started to work on building a relationship with that farmer by talking to them, making sure they’re doing things in a biosecure way, and trying to teach them what we knew as we got it.”
Martin also told the crowd that the genetic print of the bird flu virus found in the Texas herd was the same as the genetic print of the virus found in cows in North Carolina. The Texas outbreak is thought to have been caused by cows coming into contact with wild birds that were moving through the middle of the country in late 2023 or early 2024.
The case in North Carolina was the first time that cattle that did not have any signs of the disease had been found in the U.S. outbreak, which now includes 14 states and 197 proven cases. The disease was found in Colorado, California, Michigan, and Idaho in the last month.
The only case that has been proven so far is in North Carolina.
That’s how Troxler wants it. No more cases should happen in North Carolina, even though a lot of cows are moved around the country. That is his plan. That means tests should be done often and farmers who are harmed should be paid.
“The odds are against you.” Truxler said, “The more viruses there are, the more likely it is that they will change and spread to other species.”
And while cows and people are at risk, chickens and turkeys would be in terrible shape if the virus spread to groups. The speaker, Troxler, reminded the crowd that agriculture is the state’s biggest business, worth $111 billion a year.
He also said, “And we are especially at risk because of how big our poultry industry is in North Carolina.” “In fact, we were number one in the country in egg and poultry sales.”
Cows with bird flu?
Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1, has been spreading around the world for decades. Both animal and human health officials are keeping a close eye on it because it could start a terrible pandemic in humans. The disease has spread from birds to other animals in the last few years. It has caused outbreaks in many large poultry flocks in the U.S. and around the world.
In the past few years, the disease has killed animals on almost every continent. In 2021, it killed red foxes in the Netherlands, in 2022, it killed thousands of sea lions and tens of thousands of birds along the coast of Peru, and in 2023, it killed a huge number of elephant seal pups in Antarctica and along the Atlantic coast of Argentina.
In Alaska, a polar bear died in the winter of 2016. There have been deaths of sea lions on the Pacific coast of Peru and the Atlantic coast of Uruguay, among other places.
When a “high path” avian influenza spread hits a farm—which is something that commercial chicken farmers dread—Troxler said that deaths can happen quickly. He said, “Maybe overnight, half of the chickens are already dead.”
That’s when agriculture officials step in quickly and usually kill all the chickens in a house to stop the disease from spreading.
If you think of chickens coughing, this disease generally affects the respiratory tract. What’s different about this outbreak in cows is that it’s spreading to other parts of the animals.
It looks like the virus likes the mammary glands of cows, which are where milk is made. Cattle show signs like losing their hunger, needing to be fed less, and making less milk. There is thick, yellow milk that comes out of it.
Most cows get better in a few weeks. But it’s not safe for all animals that come into touch with it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that barn cats on a farm where the disease had been found in cows had died after drinking milk that hadn’t been sterilized.
Eric Deeble was on the group that Troxler put together last week. He is an undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a veterinarian who works with cattle. He said that his group is paying farmers back for what they’ve lost while their animals are sick.
Because their cows are sick, farmers can’t sell milk at the market. The federal agriculture office quickly set up the indemnity programs to help them. They might lose a lot of money if they dump the offering.
He said, “That message is important so that a farmer won’t lose their market if they find this in a herd.” Someone who thinks this might be on their farm should really come forward because there are programs that can help them get back on their feet after the losses they will face as the disease spreads through the herd.
He also said that those benefits are there in part to keep farmers from hiding instances of crime.
Taking care of the spread
Agri-health officials say that the virus will keep spreading if farmers hide cases and health and veterinary officials don’t find out. This is because it’s not clear how the virus gets from cow to cow.
Deeble said, “We’re looking at things like mats, floors, bugs, milking equipment, hands, the tools people use for dips before and after milking, dip cups, that kind of thing, and towels.” “Thank goodness we know it’s not an infection that spread through the air.”
A dozen people who work with cattle across the country have gotten the disease, which mostly shows up as pink eye.
There is a greater chance that the virus could change and spread from person to person as a respiratory disease as more cases happen in people. Southeast Asian health officials have been on the lookout for this kind of thing.
For example, last year, several children got a lung illness from touching dead chickens. A number of people have died in Vietnam and Cambodia, but the disease has only been shown to be able to spread from animals to people so far.
Martin, the state veterinary, heard from his colleagues in Idaho in the spring that there had been an outbreak in a herd that had gotten dairy cattle from the Texas herd that had the first outbreak. This was the same herd that sold cows to the farmer in North Carolina.
“Probably the cows from Texas brought it over. They got rid of the virus, so now only our own cows had it,” he said.
For his part, the farmer allowed us to test this herd and move forward at a time when it wasn’t even suggested that we do so, and we came up with a testing plan, Martin said. “Until they stopped testing positive, we pretty much tested all the positive cows that came from that herd.”
But, as Troxler said, it’s just a game of numbers. There is a high chance that the bird influenza virus will mix and match DNA and start spreading if there are more cases in other species.
All of the judges agreed that pasteurizing milk is an easy way to stop the disease from spreading to people.
This spring, news stories said that high path avian influenza had been found in some parts of the country’s milk supply. But Troxler quickly clarified that what had been found was DNA from the virus, not the virus itself.
During pasteurization, milk is heated to very high temperatures for a short time and then cooled down very quickly. This kills the virus totally, leaving only small pieces of its DNA that are not dangerous.
“All of that is taken care of by pasteurization.” “When we first started testing pasteurization, people wanted to know for sure if it really killed the food,” Troxler said. “There’s no mistake.” This bacteria and other pathogens in the milk are killed by pasteurization.