Despite bird flu anxiety in the dairy barn, a yearly tradition carries on at an Iowa county fair
By Eric Boodman
July 16, 2024
Decorah, Iowa — It was livestock check-in day at the Winneshiek County Fair, and the dairy barn was consumed with a kind of pre-prom anxiety.
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Just as authorities fretted about Christmas Covid spikes, so vets are trying to prevent trailers from clanking back home with microscopic stowaways replicating in udder cells.
They’re also hoping to avert inter-species spread. Cow-to-chicken could wipe out a whole poultry flock. Cow-to-pig could put the virus into an efficient
mutation machine, potentially allowing a pathogen that prefers udders and bird intestines to become one that likes living in our lungs. Though the handful of human infections documented so far in farmworkers have been mild,
cow-to-human is a real risk, too. The longer H5N1 circulates in cattle, the more it poses a pandemic risk for us.
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States like
Iowa,
Wisconsin, and
Minnesota have so far allowed lactating dairy cows at shows, but only if they’re flu-tested in the seven days before they arrive. In
Colorado, meanwhile, such precautions are recommended but not required.
...
To the outside eye, the occupants of the Winneshiek County dairy barn seemed relaxed. When they weren’t coiffing or cleaning up after their cattle, they lounged in beach chairs, popping fried cheese curds, enjoying the breeze of industrial fans. But there was an undercurrent of concern: They didn’t want anyone overstating the flu threat or giving their industry a bad rap.
“Our milk is totally 100% safe to drink because everything’s pasteurized,” said Mark Knutson, who milks around 400 cows in Ossian.
“But, you know, the media gets hold of it, blows it out of proportion, scares everybody.” Then again, he thought some precautions made sense. Knutson is on the fair board, which had canceled this year’s open-class dairy show — partially because of low enrollment, partially because of bird flu risk — bringing the number of lactating cows down to a tenth of what it might’ve been.
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To D.M., the co-owner of a herd of 500, who wanted to be identified only by initials, testing was the reason he was sitting this year’s cow shows out.
“
They’ll test the cows’ milk, that way they’ll find out if there’s any more of it out there, which is none of their business, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. If bird flu had arrived on his farm, he didn’t want to know. He’d of course isolate any sick animals in the sick pen, and discard their milk, the way he always does. The cows are his livelihood. He takes care to keep them healthy, and to keep his product pristine. But he’s too afraid of the stigma that might accompany a positive test — so afraid that he wouldn’t even apply to the federal program that would reimburse him for liquid pounds he couldn’t sell, leaving money on the table. Vets were hearing such views from other clients, too, and nationally, only around 30 producers have applied for government compensation.
“If it shows up, you don’t know if your creamery is going to keep taking your milk,” he said, even though the protocol is for sales to start back up again after a 30-day hiatus.
For now, that was probably hypothetical. While Iowa had recorded 13 infected herds, there hadn’t yet been any reported cases on dairies in the state’s northeast corner; the closest ones were a few hours to the west, or north in Minnesota. But in his and some of his neighbors’ views, it was only a matter of time. They talked as if spread were inevitable, bovine H5N1 on its way to being endemic, an annoying fact of life that dairies just have to deal with.
Complete article:
https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/16/bird-flu-dairy-cattle-biosecurity-county-fairs/
