By Steve Gilman
Since its detection in 1996 in Hong Kong, the initial outbreak of the H1N1 “Bird Flu” virus has significantly strengthened and morphed – circling the planet, mutating and jumping species as it goes. Initially mild in wild birds, it now severely impacts over 485 bird breeds with major implications for avian biodiversity. In 2022, the virus was discovered in mammals, killing hundreds of seals in New England and Quebec, followed by a “mass infection event” at a Spanish mink farm. This modern, widely promiscuous version of the H1N1 virus is now labeled “Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza” (HPAI) – presently impacting a wide range of 48 mammal hosts, including cats and dogs, mice, seals, sea lions, raccoons, foxes, and bears – as well as dairy cows and humans.
With sporadic occurrences in 48 states, the confined poultry industry remains the hardest it. Since February 2022, 101 million egg-layers and meat birds have been put to death in attempts to control the accelerating outbreaks. Then in March 2024, it was discovered that virulent bird flu had jumped into dairy cattle in Texas. At this wring in August 2024, HPAI was authenticated in 192 dairy herds in 13 states, 64 of which were in Colorado. These official numbers are squishy at the base, however, due to piecemeal testing protocols and uncoordinated responses that vary significantly from state to state, topped with disjointed federal actions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
In the meantime, hiding in plain sight are the officially promoted conventional ag production practices dictating today’s industrialized food supply that lie as the undivulged root of the viral outbreaks. In the U.S., some 212,000 CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) crowd large numbers of animals into small spaces, dominating today’s factory farm “efficiency of scale” livestock and poultry production. Also contributing to this so-called efficacy are unregulated practices that allow feeding potentially contaminated poultry manure to cattle as an inexpensive way to grow meat and dispose of waste litter simultaneously. What could ever go wrong?
Moving into Dairy Cows
In a major species jump, a newly modified HPAI outbreak was discovered this March on U.S. dairy farms in Midwest and Western states, producing symptoms ranging from mild malaise and low milk production to death. The virus was also found in the milk. Unlike poultry operations that rely on culling entire flocks, cattle are a major long-term investment. While this outbreak immediately called for effective state and federal remedial responses, the piecemeal testing protocols and remediation attempts vary considerably, and the overall magnitude of the outbreaks remains elusive. Meanwhile, the virus is still spreading, infecting more distant dairies and beef cattle. Herds in Eastern and Northeastern states have not been affected at the time of writing, and neither is there an identified threat to dairy cows who spend time on pasture.
Initially, USDA maintained that cow infections were mainly transmitted between animals via herd-wide milking equipment. State and federal officials broadcast assurances to the public that the virus typically causes minor illness in cows and can be controlled by taking additional precautions when moving cows and equipment. Further reports, however, indicated that some animals were dying from secondary infections due to weakened immune systems caused by the virus. In contrast, others had to be killed by farmers because they failed to recover. Then, a new study published in Nature that investigated outbreaks on nine farms in four states reported a significant increase in cow deaths. Further, the HPAI virus was found in more than 20% of the studied cows’ nasal swabs, even among those with no symptoms, where it could be easily transmitted to other cows along with the ability to extend more widely to new locations and further species.
To overcome the resistance of many farmers to test their herds since that might require them to take further culling actions, in June, USDA finally announced support via a disaster relief fund to compensate them for the value of milk lost from each cow as a result of infections for a period of 28 days. They sent postcards to 20,000 dairy producers, notifying them of the payments and further financial support for expenses such as veterinary treatment and purchasing protective gear for farm workers. Released in July, the funding is based on 90% of the conventional milk pay price, which means that, should it be necessary, organic farmers will not be compensated at the higher organic milk price level, which reflects expanded production expenses. By early August, $2 million had been paid out to dairy farmers as compensation for milk production lost to bird flu.
After reports documented that the virus was also showing up in the milk, officials hastened to proclaim that the dairy supply is safe because pasteurizing milk products entirely kills any virus that might be present. Recent samples tested by the FDA’s Center for Food Safety found no active virus in 167 dairy products, including milk, cheese and ice cream purchased at stores in 27 states – although 17% contained viral fragments. In mid-September, USDA will collect tissue samples from healthy milk cows sent to slaughter in a year-long testing program to determine if the virus shows up in cows with no symptoms.
While USDA can exercise federal power to require testing for cattle moved across state lines, the bulk of the testing and on-the-ground response is delegated to the states. Whether these efforts are too little/too late remains to be seen, as testing has involved only a small fraction of the nation’s nine million dairy cows. Michigan, for example, recently reported its 27th infected dairy herd and has issued a new Risk Reduction and Response Order requiring all dairies to adopt enhanced biosecurity measures – including prohibiting the exhibition of all lactating dairy cows and those in the last two months of pregnancy across the state for at least 60 consecutive days. As the state with the highest number of reported cases, Colorado is implementing bulk-tank testing at dairy operations in a singular, effective effort to prevent the further spread of the infection. However, the state has documented “spillover events” where the mutated virus has moved back into poultry CAFOs, requiring the culling of 3.2 million infected birds. Thus far, there have been no reports of any outbreaks in the Northeast.
Humans Infected
So far, 13 farmworkers working directly with infected poultry or cows have tested positive for the virus, mostly with mild flu-like symptoms. However, while officials have evaluated thousands of cows, they do not have the authority to compel workers to get tested, and only about 60 farm workers have been monitored to date. Infectious disease experts, however, believe many more have been affected. Clearing out culled birds and sanitizing the barns after an outbreak is sweltering work and many workers fail to wear the hot protective gear when provided while remaining fearful of losing their jobs if they have to call in sick. Thus far, there has been no documented person-to-person spread or mutations found in the strain’s genome that would allow the virus to spread more easily in humans.
However, the original H1N1 strain has taken on more deadly configurations, or clades, in poultry flocks in Asia. Some 900 human deaths were attributed to the initial 1996 outbreak. And here in 2024, multiple hospitalizations and a recent death are ascribed to outbreaks of a more deadly infection that has been affecting poultry handlers in Cambodia since 2023. Thus far, the H1N1 Asian clade is distinct from the primary HPAI mutation circling the planet and is responsible for the current animal and human outbreaks in the U.S.
As the number of infected cows rises, however, there are increasing concerns on the part of health officials that the more the virus spreads via multiple pathways, the more opportunity it has to mutate and infect people, potentially resulting in a more widespread pandemic. The past COVID-19 experience revealed significant problems in the U.S. approach to testing and countering emerging pathogens. This time around, the CDC is spending $5 million to vaccinate CAFO workers against seasonal flu to prevent a potentially dangerous mutation with bird flu. It is working to develop a vaccine to treat workers who are involved with culling infected poultry. Meanwhile, many antiviral drugs developed during COVID are in short supply or are now being evaluated as ineffective. As concerns continue to spread, some bipartisan members of Congress are requesting that USDA ramp up its bird flu response definitively along with vigorous research and remediation efforts.
The Smoking Gun CAFO connection and the No SHT Act
This virulent HPAI strain of bird flu has quickly become a major food production crisis for the nation’s densely populated factory farms, directly affecting the U.S. food system and the overall economy. As a flagrant example of agency capture by the highly profitable agribusiness interests, after decades of functioning as a primary incubator for HPAI, USDA still does not incriminate the large CAFO-style poultry farms that produce 90% of the nation’s meat and eggs, placing the blame on biosecurity breaches from wild birds instead.
Large-scale factory farms confine up to 125,000 birds in a single windowless barn, creating ideal conditions for proliferating viral mutations. The largest CAFO dairies hold permits to house 70,000 cows, while the nation’s biggest meat cattle CAFO in Idaho is an 800-acre facility holding 150,000 cows at a time. Along with their prodigious water use, large multi-sized CAFOs also generate huge quantities of polluting waste – putting public health and the environment at risk via toxic air and water conditions and methane and nitrous oxide emissions that are intensifying climate change. Meanwhile, the so-called “efficiency” of large CAFOs with their purported economies of scale has put smaller, sustainable, ecologically responsible livestock farms out of business.
Even more suspect is the USDA-protected conventional ag practice of feeding poultry litter to cattle as a possible source of HPAI contamination. Due to the unique digestive system of ruminants, the economics of the beef cattle industry has long been based on feeding waste materials as a source of dietary nutrients. The litter is a mixture of chicken feces, feathers, and bedding materials from confined chicken houses and is sold as fertilizer and low-cost cattle feed. Studies have shown that the chicken litter fed to cattle can harbor salmonella, E. coli bacteria, botulism, antibiotics, and residues of the bird flu virus – generating concerns that chicken feces are a potential cause of the viral outbreaks in cows.
There are currently no federal regulations governing this industrialized livestock feeding practice. However, California has prohibited feeding chicken litter to dairy cows while still allowing it to feed beef cattle. In 1967, the FDA initially objected to using chicken litter as a feedstock but rescinded their opposition in 1980 in the face of targeted industry research – leaving the allowance to the states instead. In 2003, the FDA temporarily banned feeding poultry litter to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). However, they later reversed their decision to prohibit cow and sheep brains and spinal fluid in chicken feed, which could then be excreted back into their litter and utilized as cattle feed. Meanwhile, the European Union and Canada have banned the use of poultry litter as animal feed due to its confirmed disease potential.
In response here in the U.S., Senator Cory Booker (D, NJ), backed by a range of scientific experts, recently introduced the NO Stool in Herd’s Troughs Act – known as the NO SHT Act – prohibiting the intentional addition of excrement to animal food. In reply, the American Feed Industry Association denied the charges, instead pinning the blame for the HPAI outbreaks on the usual suspects: wild migratory birds and small flocks of home chickens.
What’s Next?
As promulgated by federal and state officials, the outbreak numbers cited in the 8th month of 2024 are just a snapshot of the current development and spread of HPAI since 2022 in the U.S. Since the infection outbreaks regularly go through periodic lulls, it’s difficult to ascertain the efficacy of the responses taken to control it. So far, Colorado is the only state requiring bulk tank testing to identify infected herds straightforwardly. What is clear is this accelerating virus is a global event that has taken on a life of its own. Where it goes from here is unknown – but due to its virulence and the track record of other viruses, it is not unknowable.
As a major example, we live in a time when we have witnessed the COVID-19 virus ramp up into a full-scale pandemic, sickening many and taking millions of lives. Although it has become a better-contained endemic disease, new mutations continue to develop. Five years after the initial outbreak, the public’s guard was down, and the CDC reported high wastewater levels of the virus in every state. COVID cases are surging, with twice as many hospitalizations and deaths as in 2023, though for the non-immune compromised, the general cases are more akin to bad respiratory flu.
A significant virus distinction this time is that these aggressive, newly developing HPAI outbreaks are clearly part and parcel of our industrialized food system. Despite the culling/slaughter of over 100 million poultry in futile efforts to contain it, Bird Flu has flown the poultry CAFOs to directly infect dairy and meat cattle along with an expanding list of innocent mammals, including humans. Meanwhile, despite the vigorous official assurances that our food system remains safe, these industrialized methods are coming into focus. More consumers are beginning to see through the veil of cheap food production, masking inherently unsustainable and hazardous food practices.
Years of overt USDA support, coupled with taxpayer subsidies and corporate concentration, have enabled large-scale factory farms to dominate our food system. Their embrace of industrialized mass production methods applied to agriculture is producing a proclaimed lower-cost “efficiency of scale” that has forced countless farmers out of business. Today, the remaining grassroots farmers are struggling to survive due to low prices and market competition.
For consumers, it's well to remember what happened to food security when the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the entire conventional food supply chain from workers and food production to processing, distribution and demand. With their “just in time” supply model in tatters, the meat, dairy, and egg CAFOs were especially hard hit. It was the grassroots food economies of localized farmers and community enterprises that stepped into the breach to feed the populace.
To illustrate, USDA’s recent study, “Local Food Systems Response to COVID,” documented weekly consumer expenditures in various market channels and by community size – specifically large and small cities and non-metro medium and small communities. Across the board, the biggest market supply gainers were specialty markets, health food stores, small-format groceries, CSAs, and direct-from-producer purchases. Because of gathering restrictions, Farmers Markets and restaurants were initially impacted but later significantly increased their market share. Meanwhile, supermarkets showed little increase as a key link of the agribusiness food chain.
Today, however, agribusiness is back in the food economy’s driver’s seat and thanks to so-called “inflation,” food is more expensive than ever. However, major government-sanctioned food corporation consolidation through mergers and acquisitions and record profits fed by food sector domination on the backs of highly exploited guest workers is not so easily concealed. Meanwhile, core community farmers are reeling with the shocks of extreme heat and cold, flooding and drought, fires, disease, and pests – along with the financial effects of the rapidly expanding climate crisis.
In the face of mounting climate challenges and further food security impacts, we all need to step up to support our community farmers and local food infrastructure directly all of the time, not just during dire events. Helping to bolster and build a thriving long-term local food supply resilience is key to our wellbeing and civilized survival. While we need more organic, soil-health-based family farms and farmers, everything from home gardens and Community Supported Agriculture groups to food hubs and co-ops are important parts of the picture.
It's also well to remember that Government R’ Us and it is the role of our representatives to represent us – not the Big Food establishment. This requires engaging in policy advocacy to marshal support at the local, state and federal governmental levels. Our seven state NOFA Chapters welcome your participation.
Steve Gilman is the Interstate NOFA Policy Coordinator.
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