Discussion thread: H5N1 avian flu in US dairy cows including human cases (poultry, dairy workers) - March 24, 2024 +

[Commonground]

Wisconsin’s $98,000 Wake-Up Call: Why Your Bulk Tank Tests Are Missing What’s Already Here

Sunday, October 19th, 2025
If 20,000 clean tests can’t stop what’s coming in 60 days, what exactly are we measuring?

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: What farmers are discovering through Wisconsin’s H5N1 situation is that negative bulk tank tests don’t mean what we think they mean—UC Davis documented California farms with 5-10% infection rates persisting up to three weeks before detection thresholds triggered, and with 3.5 million birds just depopulated at Jefferson County’s Daybreak Foods facility, that silent spread window becomes critically important. The financial stakes are sobering:

continued: https://www.thebullvine.com/news/wis...-already-here/

[Commonground]

Slotkin, Klobuchar, Colleagues Press USDA to Address Animal Health Impacts of their Proposed Reorganization

Oct 22, 2025 | Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, and Food Safety, and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, led seven of their colleagues in pressing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden on the Department’s proposed reorganization plan and its impacts on animal health threats.

“We write to express our strong concerns that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Department-wide reorganization plan could disrupt critical animal and plant health activities,” wrote the Senators. “The USDA should not hamper its capacity to address the dangerous threats posed by New World Screwworm (NWS) and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) to livestock and poultry, like so many animal health threats faced by the United States, through coordination, monitoring, communication, and research and scientific development.”

“USDA is already reeling from the chaotic firing, rehiring, and resignation of key workers. Since the beginning of this Administration alone, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has seen over 1,300 employees leave due to the Deferred Resignation Program, including around 100 veterinarian positions, with more than 500 additional employees departing due to other attrition,” the Senators continued. “Most of these employees were in key animal and plant health positions working within the divisions of Veterinary Services, Plant Protection & Quarantine, and Wildlife Services, preventing dangerous plant and animal disease threats from entering the United States and providing critical deterrent services to airports to avert bird strikes on planes.”

Along with Slotkin and Klobuchar, the letter was signed by Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Mark Warner (D-VA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The full letter is available here and below.

https://www.slotkin.senate.gov/2025/10/22/slotkin-klobuchar-colleagues-press-usda-to-address-animal-health-impacts-of-their-proposed-reorganization/

[Commonground]

WHO
Beyond the cages: protecting poultry and people in Surabaya through One Health surveillance

23 October 2025


Standing amid stacked chicken cages and two steaming pots of hot water, Vicky recounts the story of his family business while passing processed chickens to his staff for delivery. “Our business was safe from the avian influenza outbreak in 2003,” he says. “We had nothing to worry about.”

At the time, Vicky was just three years old, long before he joined the family business. But the lessons learned from the H5N1 outbreak – which spread across Asia, devastated poultry farms and killed millions of birds – continue to shape Indonesia’s vigilance against zoonotic diseases. That vigilance now extends to traditional markets like Tambahrejo, where Vicky’s stall is part of a new avian influenza surveillance effort.

The One Health initiative – led by the Ministry of Health with support from animal, environmental and human-health partners, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – was piloted in five cities from 28 July to 1 August 2025. The initiative aims to strengthen early detection and response to avian influenza and other zoonotic diseases at the animal–human interface. Surabaya, the capital of East Java and a major transit hub where poultry from across regions is transported, slaughtered and sold, was among the pilot locations.

continued: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/n...h-surveillance

[Pathfinder]

Influenza A Virus detection in Bulk Tank and Pen Level Milk from Dairies Affected by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1

Posted November 03, 2025.
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View ORCID ProfileChloe Stenkamp-Strahm, Jason Lombard, Blaine Melody, Patrick Brinson, Brian McCluskey
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.26.25338833
This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

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Abstract

Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 has been infecting dairy herds in the U.S. since its initial incursion into cows in early 2024. Although national strategies have aimed to detect affected herds, the best way to surveil herds for the H5N1 virus has not been formally studied and we also do not understand herd-level patterns of infection. To understand infection patterns of H5N1 in dairy herds over time, we conducted early surveillance of non-affected farms in California in the Fall of 2024 in an observational study. Daily bulk tank milk (BTM) samples were submitted from each herd and tested for influenza A (IAV) via rRt-PCR. In a subset of herds, IAV testing of multiple excretion types from cattle of different classes and pen-level daily milk was also completed soon after BTM detection. Daily detections of IAV occurred in BTM for a minimum of 33 days, with some herds continuing to have detection beyond a 75-day window. BTM Ct nadirs were seen between 1-3 weeks of detection. In herds that were tested, virus was detected in the milk from all pens of cattle within a very short time frame after BTM detection, or prior to the initiation of pen level sampling. A very low percentage (2.8%) of individual cow samples tested positive for IAV when collected soon after BTM detection, and although the virus was found in all excretion types, a majority of positive samples were from milk. This suggests that BTM may be the best early indicator of herd infection, and that movement of the virus to all lactating pens of cattle after herd incursion is relatively quick. These results also suggest that surveillance strategies with a long interval between BTM testing days may miss herds with short infection windows. Because most herds experienced test days where some submitted BTM samples had virus detected while others did not, and virus was detected in pen level milk samples when the BTM from the herd had become test negative, this work also highlights the necessity of studying the test sensitivity of IAV rRt-PCR detection in aggregate milk samples.

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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....26.25338833v2